Energy Security

[Surferbeetle]

Dammit Bill I'm a civil engineer not a mechanical, chemical or petroleum engineer...

IMHO this book is worth every penny. Beyond Oil and Gas: the Methanol Economy by George A. Olah, Alain Goeppert, G.K. Surya Prakash

Amazon Review -The increasing world population and the declining availability of cheap oil threaten to plunge the world into a global energy crisis. Concerns over our reliance on oil and gas and the impact of fossil fuels on the environment have escalated significantly in recent years. This book explores current energy sources (oil, natural gas, coal, atomic energy) as well as renewable alternative energies (wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, etc), the interrelation of fuels and energy, and the extent of non-renewable fossil fuel resources. Besides the need to find alternates to diminishing fossil fuels, the authors outline the need for hydrocarbons and their products way into the future despite depleting reserves and global warming, and examine the envisioned hydrogen economy and its significant shortcomings.It illustrates how methanol can be used as a convenient liquid fuel and a raw material for hydrocarbons and their products. The needed methanol can be made from a variety of sources including carbon dioxide (the main greenhouse gas). This timely book demonstrates how carbon dioxide from industrial exhausts (and eventually even atmospheric carbon dioxide) can be converted into safe liquid methanol.

Natural gas changes the energy map by David Rotman in the November/December 2009 edition of Technology Review

Lifeline for Renewable Power By David Talbot in the January/February 2009 edition of Technology Review

A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030; November 2009; Scientific American Magazine; by Mark Z. Jacobson; Mark A. Delucchi

22 Dec '09 Bloomberg, Iraq’s Oil Output Quota May Become OPEC’s ‘Hot Iron’ (Update1) By Rob Verdonck

Iraq’s plan to boost oil output with the help of foreign companies may upset the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ efforts to support prices because the nation has no quota to limit its production.

Oil companies including Royal Dutch Shell Plc, BP Plc and OAO Lukoil may help Iraq meet a target to boost oil output capacity to 12 million barrels a day in the next six years after winning oil licensing rounds earlier this year.