Friday, December 15, 2006

So Here's a Thought...

I work for a HUGE corporation. The office I work at is under a dedicated contract: I only do work for the EPA. The majority of the corporation I work for doens't do that, they work on infrastructure, and building type projects.

The drilling job I recently went on (see early december blog postings), was for our corporate partners. The wells we were installing were for a really large (1.8 Billion Dollars) Coal-to-Diesel plant. The plant will take Coal found in wyoming, and through some kebler-like magic will turn it into low-sulfur diesel fuel. The plant is expected to open in 5-10 years from now (we were just looking to find enough water to sustain the plant out there).

At the same time here, my car is pretty old, and the wife and I are trying to hold off on a new one until there are better hybrids/hydrogen/fuel cell/etc... type cars on the market. It seems to me that the news reports that we are always on the cusp of the newests clean-fuel/hybrid technology for cars, like if we just wait 2 years, there may be a new technology laying around that will be better.

Here's the thing. The project I was working on was to create new diesel fuel. There's a sister project to this one in West Virginia right now too. If we are so close to an energy alternative for car fuel, then why are they building these massive plants for diesel? For 1.8 billion dollars and a timeline of almost 10 years for full production, they must have a good handle on the energy market...if someone were coming out with a hydrogen car soon, or if they thought the technology was close, they wouldn't invest in this shit....would they? I don't think so.

so what the fuck?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

you should watch a movie called "Who Killed The Electric Car". Good documentary on this very subject.

Joe said...

I heard about that movie...I haven't seen it yet though.