Synthetic Fuel - Coal to fuel and oil shale

[EQuin]

Alot of us are rightly concerned about the price of oil and its inflationary consequences to our economy, our nation's well-being and those of our Western allies:

http://www.race-dezert.com/forum/showthread.php?t=42608

After reading Glenn Beck's opinion piece on the poor direction our country has been heading towards with respect to energy policy, it got me thinking alot about the excellent points he made. Here's his piece, titled "U.S. is a Suicidal Superpower":

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/24/beck.oil.prices/

Curious, I did a search on synthetic fuel and came across this:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...n24996859/pg_1

According to this and many other similar articles, technology to convert coal (of which we have an over-abundance) into liquid fuel has been around for about 80 years. And new technology makes that conversion much more efficient to the point where it would be profitable if oil reaches $39-$44 per barrel (as of now, it's around $115-$119). This new technology also converts it so that it burns cleaner than diesel with less particulates, and no engine modifications are needed for internal combustion engines to run it.

Although a different resource and different technology, in a somewhat similar vein is the new in-situ technology Shell and Oxy have developed for oil shale, another overly-abundant resource our country has. Here are some interesting articles about its promise:

http://www.accesstoenergy.com/view/a...e/s76a3668.htm
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/rpt/OilShale.html

SO WHY ARE WE NOT TAKING MORE ADVANTAGE OF THESE RESOURCES AND TECHNOLOGIES AND WEANING OURSELVES OFF OF FOREIGN OIL? Why do we continue to transfer our nation's wealth to foreign countries that hate us? What the heck is going on? I can understand that the oil shale in-situ technology is still somewhat experimental. So perhaps it's a bit premature to get our hopes up too high for that alternative. But the coal-to-liquid synthetic fuel sounds much more promising, unless I'm missing something? Only thing I can think of is the greenhouse gas concerns with the coal-to-synth fuel, but what would be so different than what we have now with regular crude and gasoline consumption? Anyone else in the industry or with knowledge on this care to expound?

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