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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Rentech(RTK) - gas-to-liquids and cleaner fuel -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rock who wrote (7610)	8/19/1998 9:58:00 AM
From: eric deaver	Respond to of 14347

I had promised a review of the Oil & Gas Interest newsletter article on GTL. Did not get a chance to read it until last night. It is a good overview of the technology and its history. Nothing in it that has not been covered already by this thread (and others of course - no offense Yahoo and RB). They discussed the Public Service Co. of Colorado landfill plant and of course the TX negotiations (no hints as to status). One quote by Yak: "There is no such thing as a generic plant. Our technology makes a lot of sense in a refinery setting, for converting refinery bottoms to liquid hydrocarbons and/or electricity, and can also be used with coal, while cobalt catalysts are best suited for natural gas." There were two things that caught my eye in the article. First the following paragraph: "Companies have improved upon traditional iron catalysts and also developed new catalyst materials. Syntroleum is among the firms focusing on use of cobalt as a catalyst, while Shell uses a proprietary metallocene catalyst. Other firms, including Sasol and Rentech, have worked to improve the efficiency of iron, the only catalyst in the public domain." I just found this interesting. I know that Rentech's technology is proprietary but this makes it sound like it isn't and I was not aware that iron was the "traditional" catalyst. The second thing that caught my eye was more of a global issue. It seems that Arco estimates total global gas reserves at 5000 trillion scf and that this would convert to "several billion barrels of new liquid reserves". Also it was noted that the BTU conversion is "10 Btus of gas convert to 6 Btus of syncrude. The balance is used in the conversion process, converted to steam or electricity, or lost as waste heat." Now it seems to me that maybe (economics aside) it may not be the best thing to convert all our natural gas to liquids. I mean if eventually we can access the stranded reserves, we can use 100% of the gas Btus. All of the world gas reserves for a few billion barrels of oil does not SEEM equitable to me somehow. I know the oil is more valuable but does that make it right? But it is better than flaring if that is what is happening now. Anyway, did not mean to get all touchie-feelie there. FWIW, Eric