Hydrocarbon liquefaction: viability as a peak oil mitigation strategy

Mikael Höök, Dean Fantazzini, André Angelantoni and Simon Snowden

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Current world capacity of hydrocarbon liquefaction is around 400,000 barrels per day (kb/d), providing a marginal share of the global liquid fuel supply. This study performs a broad review of technical, economic, environmental, and supply chains issues related to coal-to-liquids (CTL) and gas-to-liquids (GTL). We find three issues predominate. First, significant amounts of coal and gas would be required to obtain anything more than a marginal production of liquids. Second, the economics of CTL plants are clearly prohibitive, but are better for GTL. Nevertheless, large scale GTL plants still require very high upfront costs, and for three real world GTL plants out of four, the final cost has been so far approximately three times that initially budgeted. Small scale GTL holds potential for associated gas. Third, CTL and GTL both incur significant environmental impacts, ranging from increased greenhouse gas emissions (in the case of CTL) to water contamination. Environmental concerns may significantly affect growth of these projects until adequate solutions are found.

Keywords: hydrocarbon liquefaction; gas-to-liquids; CTL; GTL; coal-to-liquids; peak oil (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q32 Q38 Q42 Q48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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