One Reason Why "Peak Oil Doom" Is No Cause for Panic

The Group's technology makes viable the distributed production of fuels from gas biomass, coal and waste. Microchannel processing is emerging at a time of the discovery and development of vast shale gas reserves in North America, increasing focus on the utilization of stranded and associated gas and the emergence of biomass-to-liquids (BTL) and waste-to-liquids (WTL) as a viable option for the sustainable supply of transportation fuel in the decades ahead. In addition, the growing political, geological and environmental complexity of oil exploration and production has focussed attention on the monetization of associated and stranded gas reserves and cessation of flaring, for which distributed GTL is suited, the company says. _GCC

What you see in the image above is a Velocys / Oxford Catalysts microchannel gas to liquids technology. It is an award-winning technology which promises to turn at least 1 billion boe worth of wasted flared natural gas into valuable liquid fuels, each year. Probably considerably more.

The same technology can turn biomass, coal, or any carbonaceous material or waste into valuable liquid fuels. Better yet, Oxford Catalysts is making progress in turning itself from a research group into a commercial company.

The Oxford Catalysts Group has raised £21 million (US$34 million) before expenses from the conditional placing of 26,250,000 new shares, which will be used to accelerate its ongoing transition from a research and development organization to a commercial product company. In particular, additional staff will be hired to support its commercial and manufacturing operation, the Group’s supply chain capabilities will be bolstered and investments will made in development and testing infrastructure.

This is the latest step in the Oxford Catalysts Group’s drive to commercialize its technology for the production of synthetic fuels from conventional fossil fuels and renewable sources such as biowaste, primarily through its microchannel process technology platform which is able to accelerate chemical reactions by 10- to 1000-fold. As a result, microchannel Fischer Tropsch (FT) processes can operate economically when producing just 500 barrels per day of oil equivalent (boe) from a wide variety of carbon-containing wastes, while achieving greater productivities than for conventional FT reactors (earlier post). _GCC

An extra billion boe per year from otherwise-flared natural gas is nothing to sneeze at. Neither is the potential for on-site gtl, btl, and ctl which small portable microchannel-FT units would provide. The rules for fuels are about to change. Peak oil panic will then go the way of the dinosaurs and Y2K willies.