United States Patent Application: 0100213046

We have many times documented for you the development, by Penn State University scientists, of a Carbon Dioxide recycling technology most often referred to as "tri-reforming", wherein Carbon Dioxide can be reacted with Methane, which can itself be synthesized, via the century-old Sabatier process, from Carbon Dioxide, and made thereby to produce valuable hydrocarbons.

One Penn State scientist, Craig Grimes, whom we are fond of quoting, knowing of the true potentials for recycling Carbon Dioxide, has said, of the proposals for mandated Geologic Sequestration of Carbon Dioxide in leaky old oil wells, that "Burying CO2 is ridiculous".

Recent Progress in the Direct Liquefaction of Coal -- LUMPKIN 239 (4842): 873 -- Science
  
Herein, from Amoco, we learn that, in 1988, the oil industry knew how to make a crude oil equivalent, from Coal, for $35 per barrel.
 
Comment follows excerpts from:
 
"Recent Progress in the Direct Liquefaction of Coal
 

United States Patent: 4052292
 
The Mobil Oil technology we report herein is similar in two respects to quite a few others we have previously brought to your attention.
 
First, as in our recent dispatch concerning: "United States Patent 4,111,787 - Staged Hydroconversion of an Oil-Coal Mixture", which was issued in September, 1978, to Exxon, Mobil herein utilizes a hydrocarbon oil, which can, we submit, be produced via the destructive distillation of Coal, as in a Coke oven, to dissolve more raw Coal into a liquid product that can then be "hydrotreated", and otherwise upgraded, in rather standard petroleum refining facilities, and made thereby to produce conventional liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
 
Second, in further confirmation of several of our earlier reports, renewable and Carbon-recycling cellulose can be utilized as a raw material, along with Coal, in such direct liquefaction technologies.
 
But, since Mobil is intent on making this seem to be a process that requires a large amount of conventional petroleum refinery by-product to make it work, some advance notes are in order.
 
Although Mobil is careful to repeat that products from various stages of oil refining are to be used, they do specify and identify, deep within their text: "polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon constituents such as naphthalene, dimethylnaphthalene, anthracene, phenanthrene, fluorene, chrysene, pyrene, perylene, diphenyl, benzothiophene, and their derivatives" as suitable solvents for the dissolution of "coal and wood mixtures".
 

Coal Liquefaction
 
As documented herein, the cost, in 1974, of producing liquid oil refinery feedstock, from Coal, in the US, was calculated, by the National Petroleum Council, to range between $6.50 and $7.50 per barrel.
 
The estimates were based, apparently, on CoalTL experimental and pilot plant data accumulated by the Office of Coal Research and the US Bureau of Mines; and, perhaps, from the commercial experience of South Africa's SASOL.
 
Throughout 1973, the cost of traditional crude oil ranged between $3.30 and $3.60 per barrel.