Chapter 629 Shale Oil
Now, with the fuel shortage in the United States, American scientists have begun to develop biofuels! They first used rapeseed oil methyl ester in the engine and burned it for 1,000 hours, proving that this fuel is completely combustible! Moreover, they defined biodiesel as renewable fatty acid monoesters. This is two years earlier than in history.
At the same time, these scientists are continuing to study the use of fatty acid methyl esters or ethyl esters to replace diesel as fuel, that is, using fatty acid monoesters from animals or plants, including fatty acid methyl esters, fatty acid ethyl esters and fatty acid propyl esters, to replace diesel fuel. Because of the urgency of reality, their research progress is very fast.
Except for small cars that use gasoline, all heavy trucks use diesel as fuel. As long as the diesel problem is solved, the current fuel problem can be solved!
Reagan was very happy to hear this: "In this case, let's carry out large-scale industrial production. Solving our fuel problem is urgent. If this technology is promoted on a large scale, even the energy problem of Western Europe will be solved at the same time.
"But this will bring more serious food problems," James said.
Food problem! Biodiesel is produced from plants and animals! This will naturally lead to a very complicated problem. The arable land area in the world is limited, and the food grown is also limited. In this way, if the technology of biodiesel is developed, it will inevitably consume a large amount of food, and some people in the world will go hungry!
"Okay, this is a good shortcoming!" After hearing what James said, Bush patted his thigh and said, "We must not only use these technologies ourselves, but also promote biodiesel technology to the whole of Europe!"
With his political insight, Bush immediately discovered the advantage of this shortcoming, which could be used to attack the Soviet Union!
Since the 1970s, the Soviet Union has been importing food from Western Europe! Until this year, the Soviet Union is still importing food from Western Europe. What does this show? The Soviets' own agricultural production technology is limited and they cannot use the existing land to produce enough food! Therefore, the Soviet Union needs to import food to meet their needs!
In the past, Western Europe exported food and the Soviet Union exported oil, and both sides could be said to have taken what they needed. But now, under the manipulation of the Soviets, the world's oil prices have begun to rise sharply! In this way, Western Europe not only cannot use food as a weapon, but also must ask the Soviets to export oil!
This is of course something Western Europe does not want to see. If they find out that they can use food to produce fuel, what will happen? Of course, they will use food to make fuel instead of exporting it to the Soviet Union! In this way, the Soviets will starve!
Moreover, using food to make fuel will cause a global food shortage. Then, according to the relationship between supply and demand, the price of world food will increase! This is good for Western Europe and the United States because they all have surplus food!
"Yes, we must vigorously promote this technology! In the early stages, we can even support these companies through government support!" Reagan also said.
The capitalist economy emphasizes self-reliance and survival of the fittest. The government rarely actively supports projects. But now, Reagan has made up his mind that this project must be transformed into productivity as soon as possible!
"However, this can only produce biodiesel. In addition to diesel, we also need gasoline and aviation fuel." James continued: "So, relying solely on biodiesel cannot meet our needs at this stage. We also need a new oil industry. Now, our oil experts are still developing shale oil extraction technology."
Shale oil! This concept has been hyped up in later generations. In the United States, Monterey, California is the main shale oil storage area in the United States. It is believed to have 13.7 billion barrels of recoverable shale oil reserves, accounting for 2/3 of the United States. Therefore, it is also called the American shale revolution and the new golden age of energy. The United States used to be a pure oil importer, so it had to maintain the energy security of the Middle East, but what happened later? The United States even competed with Saudi Arabia in exporting oil!
Although this concept was only popularized later, the history of shale oil is not short.
Oil shale, also known as oil shale, is a high-ash sedimentary rock containing combustible organic matter. The main difference between it and coal is that the ash content exceeds 40%, and the main difference between it and carbonaceous shale is that the oil content is greater than 3.5%. In fact, it can be simply said that oil shale is a kind of oil-containing mineral. Removing the minerals and separating the fuel oil is the production process of this shale oil.
As early as 800 years ago, oil shale was used as fuel for making pottery in Fushun, China. However, at that time, just like coal, the mineral was burned directly. The industrial method of using oil shale to produce shale oil by dry distillation began in the first half of the 19th century. In 1835, France built the world's first shale oil plant, which distilled oil shale to produce shale oil, and then produced kerosene, paraffin, etc. for lighting. The UK began shale oil production in 1862, and by 1937, the production of shale oil in Western Europe reached 500,000 tons.
It's a pity that this production method is relatively costly. Since crude oil has been extracted in the Middle East, a large amount of high-yield self-gushing crude oil can be produced by digging a hole in the ground and the crude oil will spray out by itself. This method is very low-cost, only a few dollars a barrel. Therefore, the shale oil industry in Western European countries has been shut down one after another. Even if they have cheap oil imports, they still need to spend a lot of effort to produce shale oil!
But now, things are different!
Oil is no longer cheap! The world crude oil price has soared to a high price of $120 per barrel! Such oil prices are a major blow to the economy of the Western world! The rising oil prices will affect the transportation industry, causing the price of all consumer goods to rise, and will affect the downstream products of the petrochemical industry, causing price increases!
Under such circumstances, the development of shale oil has once again been put on the agenda!
"According to our petroleum experts, the price of shale oil will drop to around $80 per barrel. If it is further mass-produced, it will definitely drop further, and may eventually drop to $50 per barrel. In this case, our shale oil will still be very competitive." James said: "And now, looking at this trend, the world crude oil price will remain high for a long time, and the full launch of our shale oil industry is also imminent."