The latest nonsense about oil. This makes even Larry Kudlow look like an oil bull.
Research promises
$5/barrel oil
New method called ecologically superior,
more productive than drilling
By Jon E. Dougherty
© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com
A research team says it has developed a new technology for the
oil industry that would lower crude-oil prices to just $5 a barrel,
dramatically decrease the cost of gasoline and oil-related
products and break the hold the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries has over U.S. oil supplies.
"OPEC needs to be told the game is over," said Larry Elgin,
chairman of U.S. Defense America Victory, a group that
promotes technologies that strengthen national defense.
The group is also headed by Adm.
Thomas Moorer, former chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- the
highest-ranking military position in the
U.S. -- and Gen. Gordon Sumner,
formerly chairman of the
Inter-American Defense Board and
ambassador-at-large in Central
American affairs at the State
Department.
By Elgin's reckoning, the new
production method, called "Master
Separation Technology," would be one
way the U.S. could enhance its national
security by becoming less reliant on
foreign oil producers and, possibly,
less victimized by enemies seeking to
cripple national security and the U.S.
economy by cutting off U.S. oil
imports.
The technology -- which actually has been under development
for about 25 years, according to Elgin -- is similar to one already
used extensively in a Canadian oil field to extract oil that could
not be pumped out by other methods. However, he added, "this
new method will replace the old one," as it is more efficient and
less costly.
"Master Separation Technology" makes drilling for oil obsolete,
Elgin said. The process works by breaking the electro-bond
between oil and sand. After extracting oil, the sand is returned in
pristine condition. "In fact, you can plant a crop in the same soil
the next day," Elgin said, "so there are no environmental
concerns with this method."
At the Athabasca site in northern Alberta, Canada, the new
technology has been tested and declared effective. Elgin said in
North America alone there "is enough oil in the first thousand
feet of just our abandoned wells in Canada and the United States
to supply the entirety of the continent for 400 years."
Such supplies -- and the technology to access them -- would
"reduce domestic reliance on foreign oil suppliers like OPEC and
give us the ability to cut gas prices dramatically."
Using the new technology, Elgin said, oil companies could
reopen previously closed wells in the U.S. and across North
America and extract the 70 percent of oil still in the sand and ore
left in those wells by conventional oil drilling and pumping
methods. Such an increase in domestic supply -- without having
to find actual new oil wells -- would greatly decrease U.S.
reliance on overseas sources as well as domestic supplies.
"This technology would come online very gradually," Sumner
told WorldNetDaily, "and I think our current suppliers --
especially Saudi Arabia -- would adjust to it."
When asked if the new technology would harm U.S. relations
with OPEC in general, Sumner said the goal was to decrease
American reliance on foreign oil suppliers, not necessarily to cut
relations with them altogether.
"The ultimate goal is to try to make us less dependent on foreign
oil, and this [process] would certainly help," he said.
Adm. Moorer was out of town and could not be reached for
comment.
'Not invented here'?
Most major oil companies have opposed the new technology,
said Elgin, because of "their substantial investment in old oil
drilling technologies" and because "the big oil companies don't
have this technology."
"They've adopted a 'not invented here' mentality," Elgin said,
claiming some major oil corporations have tried to
reverse-engineer the technology -- without success -- and have
also tried to steal it.
Jeannie Miller, a public relations spokeswoman at Exxon, said
her company was familiar with the technology. "I think we're
even working on it," she told WorldNetDaily, but would not
comment further.
Though it would seem the major oil companies -- because they
would presumably obtain far greater production from existing
wells -- would be the most interested in seeing such new
technology come to market, Elgin said those corporations
consider the master separation process to be "disruptive
technology."
Such technologies "are those having trouble coming to market
because existing inferior technologies that are in place don't
want to be displaced," he said.
What his group wants to do is promote other such "disruptive
technologies" that would ultimately enhance national security --
and help bring them to market. The group's oil-production
technology is just the first such innovation being pushed.
Regarding the current debate within both major party
presidential campaigns over energy policy, Elgin said the
separation technology is vital to both U.S. domestic economic
and national security because it would virtually eliminate what
he views as the "stranglehold" foreign oil suppliers have over
U.S. consumers and politicians.
"Lawmakers said back in 1973 that they would never let the U.S.
be held hostage by OPEC or other foreign oil producers again,"
he said. "But here we are -- in 2000 -- again having our energy
demands being held for ransom."
Elgin said the technology has been used in similar forms to solve
"once-unsolvable" industrial waste problems, "so it is proven and
it works."
Specifically, the separation technology has been used to clean up
industrial waste from factories and also the toxic residue from
AFFF foams used by the military to cushion runways for planes
that have to make emergency landings or landings without
landing gear.
The company that owns the new production method is
Kenterprise Research, founded by technology developer James
Keene, who was unavailable for comment.
Elgin says that since major oil firms have put up roadblocks to
the process of bringing separation technology to market, his
group and Kenterprise are prepared to work with "the hundreds
of independent oil companies throughout North America to
offer them a franchise deal and let them use the process" in their
operations.
"Kenterprise would continue to control the technology, but
these independents could franchise it, duplicate it and bypass the
major players in bringing more oil to domestic markets," he
said, noting that the quality of oil extracted by the separation
technology is "very good" and "very close" to the quality of oil
pumped by the old methods.
The major oil companies "have traditionally been aligned with
OPEC in keeping these sorts of technologies off the market,"
Elgin said. "This notion that people have that if you build a better
mousetrap big companies will just jump right in and help you
develop it is not very realistic."
But "the independents [oil firms] are different," he said. "In
essence, this will be set up like the Hughes tool bit. In order to
control the technology, Keene's company will precisely control
the technology, but with franchise groups of independent oil
firms and others who are not presently in the oil business to use
the technology in areas where there are formations of oil ore.
We hope [the plan] can be quickly implemented so as to make
[the U.S.] oil-independent," he added.
The oil formations targeted by the new technology, Elgin said,
are not productive by traditional methods, but contain a huge
reserve of oil that can be accessed using the separation method.
The reason the price of a barrel of oil would be so dramatically
reduced, Elgin said, is in the reduction of overhead that the
separation method would foster.
"Everything is greatly simplified" under the new technology, he
said. "What we're doing is so much cheaper. When you have to
drill down hundreds of feet out in the middle of the ocean, with
all the manpower, equipment and transport costs, it is
expensive."
Elgin said the revelation about Kenterprise's new oil extraction
technology could also have political ramifications.
The technology "would be most important in what are
considered to be 'battleground states' in this year's presidential
election -- Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin -- the areas
known as the old oil patch, so to speak."
Old wells in these states that have long since been abandoned
because conventional oil drilling could no longer produce
sufficient amounts of crude to remain active. But with the new
technology -- "and our knowledge that up to 70 percent of the
oil in these wells is still in the ground" -- Elgin said companies
could reopen them and make them productive again.
"You can go back and get all of this oil -- 99.9 percent of it -- and
then you can simply grow back whatever's growing there
because the process returns no toxic waste, just soil," he said.
Elgin said the new technology would be used in Canada first
"because there are no environmental laws to rewrite and we're
welcome there." But, he noted, "there is a pipeline right there in
northern Alberta, where some of this technology has been
tested, that we could get the oil to market just as cheaply and
efficiently as we've promised."
Once the technology is in place in Canada, Elgin said, the U.S.
would be next. "The system is already in use in Canada -- they
have written the laws for it, they are used to it. It only makes
sense to start there," he said.
Today, Elgin will attend a seminar to describe the new
technology at Monrovia, Calif., at a United Republicans of
California meeting to be held at the Four Points Barcello Hotel.
The meeting begins at 9 a.m. local time. Elgin will speak at 1 p.m.
on the topic, "The Chinese Oil Noose."
Former state Sen. Don Rogers, an independ |
