Oil Companies Hope Grease Is the Word for Fuel

Scientists Are Turning to Fat
As Renewable Energy Source;
Tapping Pizza, Taco Residue

TULSA, Okla. — Here in the heart of the oil patch, laboratory technician Christine King is surrounded these days by containers of what her employer hopes will become the next big thing in energy: grease and fat.

There’s used cooking oil, in various shades of yellow. There’s chicken fat, a dark-brown goo with a scent that evokes dog food. “Here’s one that smells really bad,” Ms. King says, reaching for a jar and opening the lid. Inside: taco-and-pizza grease.


The small lab is in an industrial building that serves as the headquarters of Syntroleum Corp. For two decades, the people behind the tiny company have tried in vain to turn a profit by making liquid transportation fuel out of natural gas. Last summer, frustrated by its lack of progress reinventing fossil fuel, Syntroleum began shifting to what it saw as a greener pasture: making fuel from the renewable resource known as fat.

Today, Syntroleum and agricultural giant Tyson Foods Inc. are set to announce plans to build a $150 million plant somewhere in the south central U.S. that will take fat from Tyson’s processing plants and turn it into liquid fuel to power everything from cars to jets. The announcement comes two months after Arkansas-based Tyson announced a similar deal with ConocoPhillips in which the Houston-based oil company will run slugs of Tyson’s fat through existing Conoco refineries and produce what the companies call “renewable diesel” to mix at low concentrations into Conoco’s conventional oil-based diesel.

Wall St. Journal