Posted by David Sherman on Tuesday, October 03, 2006 at 5:58PM :
In Reply to: Along those lines posted by jack cain on Tuesday, October 03, 2006 at 3:31PM :
Glad you mentioned it. I've heard numbers like $60/barrel in large-scale production. The DoD actually has a study going to look into building some F-T capacity just to meet defense needs in case of a crisis. I'm all for alternative energy but the fact is for a fuel for mobile engines, nothing beats a combustible liquid for convenience and lots of energy in a small space, and once petroleum gets too expensive (which I do believe must happen eventually), coal gassification will fill the gap for a long time until we're driving nuclear-powered electric trucks or some such. The US has 25% of the world's coal. I think only China has more. Before they had kerosene, they sold something called "coal oil" for lamp fuel. I'm sure it would have been a fine fuel for diesel engines, had they existed at the time.