Company invents diesel secreting organism

This seems like it could work to me. But with 20 billion gallons of oil used per year they will have a hard time scaling up to meet even a fraction of demand. Assuming they can replace a barrel of oil with a barrel of manufactured fuel, and assuming that the 15,000 gallons per year per acre is good, then it will take... 640 acres per square mile 365 days per year 42 gallons per barrel A = [(2000000000 barrels/day) * (365 days/year) / (42gallons/barrel)]/[(15000 gallons/year-acre) * (640 acres/sq mile)] A = 18100 sq miles So we would need a fuel farm of these panels about the size of New Hampsh... [More]

Recovering the fuel is where Joule could find significant problems, said Pienkos, the NREL scientist, who is also principal investigator on a Department of Energy-funded project with Algenol, a Joule competitor that makes ethanol and is one of the handful of companies that also bypass biomass. from the story, it seems that there are two companies doing the same kind of thing. the one in the story and the one the government is backing.

Let's get this straight guys, the big oil companies are not afraid of this technology, because the demand will far outweigh the supply. If the bbl of oil goes down to $30-$60 per bbl, it will change nothing because demand will double. At the rate China, India & Brazil are putting cars on the roads and planes in the air, demand will meet the supply and oil will be back to $100 per bbl.

Interesting read. Especially the comments from BrandofAmber.

Now we need germs to make beer. Oh, never mind. I forgot. We already have those

Let's get this straight guys, the big oil companies are not afraid of this technology, because the demand will far outweigh the supply. If the bbl of oil goes down to $30-$60 per bbl, it will change nothing because demand will double. At the rate China, India & Brazil are putting cars on the roads and planes in the air, demand will meet the supply and oil will be back to $100 per bbl. you mean oil is going to drop, that is good news. when??

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Cool. Now we can pump more CO2 into the atmosphere at a fraction of the price.

Sounds pretty iffy to me. --- The alcohol in that beer you're drinking was produced by a living yeast (probably a bioengineered one). Does that make it taste iffy?

And they named them Dick Cheny!