As if the environmental record of the oil companies wasn’t bad enough, the World Bank estimates 150 billion cubic meters of natural gas are burnt off at oil fields around the world annually. In addition to being a terrible waste of resources, those gas flares contribute 400 million tons of CO2 emissions too.

Why this incredible waste? Turns out it is simple economics: it is cheaper for these companies to burn this gas, and pollute the atmosphere than it is to transport it to where it can be used. Perhaps some financial penalties for their polluting actions would help, but Synfuels thinks they’ve found another way to get these companies to clean up their act.

The Fischer-Tropsch Process
The idea has been around for a while. Basically, it allows the natural gas to be converted to a liquid fuel. Synfuels, which licenses its technology from Texas A&M University, claims it can do this better and cheaper than others ($25/barrel of gasoline instead of the typical $35/barrel from the Fischer-Tropsch process).

The company has been fine tuning its process since 2005, but says it is now close to signing its first commercial contract for a plant, potentially near Kuwait City.

Hopefully this will make it economically sensible to collect that natural gas that is being wasted today, and convert it to fuel. Doesn’t help much with the CO2 emissions, but at least the fuel will be burnt to do something useful (hopefully).

[Via Earth2Tech]

Tags: natural gas, oil, synfuels, syngas, texas a&m

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