Synfuels Are Back.

SYNTHROLEUM Corp.; NATURAL gas prospecting; GAS fields; GAS industry; MINES & mineral resources; GAS power plants; PETROLEUM industry; GAS prices; CHEMICAL process industries; LIQUEFIED natural gas; CHEMICAL engineering; FUEL cells

The article looks at natural gas reserves. Every day natural gas flares blaze across swaths of Africa, Russia, Asia and the Middle East, burning off the equivalent of 1.7 million barrels of oil. Reserves of "stranded" natural gas--the stuff that is abandoned because there is no economical way to transport it--come to maybe 2,500 trillion cubic feet. If captured and converted, the gas would make 250 billion barrels of synthetics, from clean-burning diesel to jet fuel. The world has been looking for economical ways to convert undesirable fossils like coal and methane into desirable ones like diesel. One aspirant to this achievement is a tiny research and development company in Tulsa, Oklahoma, called Synthroleum Corporation. One way to turn methane into liquid fuel is to blend it with pure oxygen under heat and pressure to produce synthesis gas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Syntroleum's plan is to create smaller, more flexible gas-to-liquid plants that can run off air rather than pure oxygen and that can work on a small scale--wherever the stranded natural gas is.