Algae? $110 Oil; $5 Gasoline; And Obama Offers Us Algae

Updates

July 7, 2013: The president of the United States may still be sold on "algae as an alternative fuel" but the industry clearly isn't. Having once invested as much as $7.6 billion in one quarter in 2007, the industry will invest a paltry $57 million in 1Q13. That amount of money will mostly cover the glossy advertising by oil companies saying how far they've come and how much they love "algae" as an alternative fuel. Bloomberg is reporting:

Europe’s biggest oil companies are scaling back work on the next generation of biofuels, a setback for the effort to create a gasoline substitute that doesn’t drain the food supply.

BP and Royal Dutch Shell have halted funds for four separate ventures because the technology to produce fuel from woody plants and waste won’t be economical until 2020 or beyond, executives at both companies said in interviews. 

 “This is very capital intensive,” Phil New, head of BP’s biofuels program, said in an interview. “There’s lots of difficult engineering. It will take time for scale-up.” 

The decisions helped cut global investment in biofuel production to $57 million in the first quarter, the lowest since 2006, from its peak of $7.6 billion in the last quarter of 2007. 

That makes it less likely the industry will meet the ambitions of U.S. and European leaders to help reduce fossil fuel pollution and wean motorists off crude oil-based fuel.

“Progress in deploying these technologies has been slower than many had anticipated and what’s needed to keep on track with our aspirations,” Maria van der Hoeven, executive director of the International Energy Agency, said in an e-mailed response to questions. 

“Many potential producers have found it difficult to secure the capital they need.”

Original Post 

Link to The Examiner.

President Obama admitted today that he does not have a "silver bullet" solution for skyrocketing gas prices, but he proposed alternative energy sources such as "a plant-like substance, algae" as a way of cutting dependence on oil by 17 percent.

"We’re making new investments in the development of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel that’s actually made from a plant-like substance, algae -- you've got a bunch of algae out here," Obama said.

"If we can figure out how to make energy out of that, we'll be doing alright. Believe it or not, we could replace up to 17 percent of the oil we import for transportation with this fuel that we can grow right here in America."

If a) the administration quit slow rolling the industry; b) the administration approved the Keystone XL; c) the administration pursued off-shore production, "we" could replace a lot more than 17 percent of the oil "we" import.

[I've been told that algae-fuel costs the equivalent of $33/gallon gasoline at the algae service station pump.]