Cooking Oil Asa Alternative Fuel

Could shale gas reserves reignite U.S. economy?

A house sits about 1,000 feet away from a drilling rig in South Fort Worth Saturday afternoon. Some concerned residents in Tarrant county feel that drilling rigs are coming to close to their homes after a accident last week in Forest Hill killed one drilling worker and caused area residents to be evacuated from their homes. (Photo: Photo by/Brandon Wade)

In late 1998, Chesapeake Energy Corp., an independent natural-gas producer based in Oklahoma City, exemplified an industry in decline.

The company’s stock price had fallen over two years from above $34 a share to 75 cents. Its market value tumbled 93 percent, to $72 million. “They’re running up a down escalator,” Michael Spohn, an analyst at Petroleum Research Group, said.

When Aubrey K. McClendon, Chesapeake’s chief executive officer and co-founder, announced he might sell the company, there was little interest, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Nov. 7 edition.

Falling gas prices had reduced the value of Chesapeake’s reserves from $2.1 billion to $661 million. “We’d had higher highs than others in the industry; then we had lower lows,” McClendon said with characteristic insouciance. “In this business, it’s good to have a short memory and thick skin.”

Good thing he didn’t sell. Thirteen years later, Chesapeake’s market value exceeds $18 billion. Its shares sell for about $28, up 8 percent this year. The company’s 120-acre neo-Georgian corporate campus bustles with construction crews building new office space. Its workforce has grown 30 percent in a year, to 12,200, and its recruiters have 700 jobs to fill. “The United States,” McClendon boasts, “has the capacity to become the Saudi Arabia of natural gas.”

A tall man who wears his wavy silver hair long by CEO standards, McClendon, 52, exudes the confidence of someone who’s certain he’s seen the future. Exploitation of newly accessible supplies of gas embedded in layers of what’s known as shale rock, he predicts, will help revive domestic manufacturing and change the terms of debate about global warming. “It’s a new industrial renaissance,” he said.

Daily News—06/28/10

Western Isles near Aberdeen, Scotland: man teaches others how to make biodiesel

Photo: http://north-harris-trading.com/page/3/

A man Western Isles offers courses on how to beat the high fuel costs by converting vegetable oil into biodiesel just 5p a liter.

The islands have some of the highest prices of fuel in the country, more than 130p per liter in many areas.

John Angus Morrison of Barvas, Lewis, biodiesel fuel produced commercially for nearly five years.

He is now planning to run three-hour fuel-making courses for £60 and has already had several people ringing up to book.

Students will also take home 4.4 gallons of biodiesel and the same amount of glycerine, the key component of soap.

He says his fuel can power most diesel-engined vehicles with little or no modification. “Newer diesel cars will need some reprogramming of the electronics which control the injectors,” said Mr Morrison, who is about to leave the island to study photography and film at Napier University, Edinburgh.

“The only other thing you need to do is change the fuel filter after the first couple of tankfuls of biodiesel.

“I have had practically no fuel costs for five years and there is no duty on this fuel for personal use either, which is a bonus. It costs about £200 to make the equipment but you get your money back in two weeks.”

He added: “There’s no noticeable loss of performance. The only thing is the exhaust smells of chips.”

Mr Morrison is also selling his business for £3,200, with the deal including 2,200 gallons of vegetable oil.

Often, the hardest part of reporting biodiesel news is figuring out the location of the story. Sorry if I ever get it wrong. Also, one reason I give a photo link is that the story of the photo is interesting to me. Yet many critics wonder whether the endeavor, funded partly through state and federal grants, was a good idea in the first place. Somers’ colleague, Councilman John Koster, said he’s been skeptical from the outset.