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Article: Fischer-Tropsch rises yet again: high oil prices are breathing new life into an old process, converting natural gas to liquid fuel.(Technology Showcase)
- Article from:
- Chemical Engineering
- Article date:
- November 1, 2005
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Access Intelligence, LLC. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Contrary to popular belief, what goes up does not always come down. Take petroleum prices for example: it seems unlikely that they ever again will drop to their levels of the mid-1990s, when crude oil often was peddled for $10-15/bbl. Today, even the most bearish forecasters expect prices for the medium term to stay above $30, and some of the more bullish ones predict tabs as high as $70-80.
And while that may be painful news for consumers at the gasoline pump, it is also the force behind the current, commercial renaissance of a venerable technology known as Fischer-Tropsch. Because if natural gas feedstock is valued at $0.70/million Btu and the ...