Dan

Calabrese

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May 26, 2008

Bacteria Into Oil? How Farting Cows May Have Solved America’s Energy Woes

Could bacteria end our oil woes? A farmer in Georgia thinks so, and the Pentagon is paying attention. And it can’t happen a moment too soon.

Last week, House Democrats ridiculously voted to sue OPEC for high oil prices (with the support of my useless Republican congressman, Vern Ehlers). Meanwhile, global warming types propose gas and carbon taxes of $300 billion a year or more, and want to turn over regulatory control of American industry to the United Nations.

These activists scoff when President Bush insists that the answers to these issues will come from new technologies. But one of the most potentially impactful new technologies may be coming sooner than anyone realizes.

The folks at Bell Plantations in Tifton, Georgia are developing a way to convert bacteria into hydrocarbons. By genetically manipulating the bacteria, they believe they can produce different molecular chains to produce the basis for gasoline, diesel, propane and a variety of other hydrocarbon fuels.

In essence, they will be able to turn bacteria into oil – in a matter of months, rather than the millions of years it takes for fossils to degrade into usable fuels.

And proprietor J.C. Bell got the idea standing on a hill where cows were farting.

“I was standing downwind from one of our herds of cows,” Bell told me in a recent interview. “And it dawned on me that they can produce something quite well, and it all stinks. That stink is methane – natural gas. Methane is CH4. It’s a hydrocarbon. I started researching that and developing it in my little facility, and that led to the conclusion that we have the ability, if we can use bacterial action, to convert biomass into hydrocarbon.”

That’s what cows, termites and lots of other things do. They eat biomass and turn it into hydrocarbon. So Bell started looking for bacteria that could break down biomass into hydrocarbon, and he found lots of them. He found them in snails that eat grass, in the gut of a wood-eating catfish in the Amazon and, of course, in wood-eating termites.

Bell Plantations plans to clone the bacteria and genetically manipulate the biomass to produce hydrocarbon in the various forms needed to supply the market they anticipate. Present plans call for 500 nationwide production facilities within 18 months, which would give Bell Plantations the capacity to produce up to 500,000 barrels a day within two years – based on expected production capacity and a U.S. Department of Agriculture study showing that the U.S. produces 1.1 billion tons of recoverable biomass every year.

“It is easily recoverable without any change in agriculture or forestry practices,” Bell said. “With some minor changes in forestry and agriculture practices, we can go up to about 2 billion tons. There is a clear road to a tremendous amount of biomass. There are entire industries that produce an incredible amount of biomass that is available instantly to use.”

How much of an impact would that make? The entire country consumed 20.7 million barrels a day of liquid fuels and other petroleum products in 2007. If Bell can do what he says he can do, he can supply 2.5 percent of the entire country’s fuel needs within two years. And that’s for a brand new technology. Once it matures, who knows what it can do?

We should know pretty soon if this can work. Bell Plantations is already building demonstration facilities. And it’s getting more than a little attention from the federal government, particularly the Pentagon, whose Defense Energy Support Center procures all the fuel used by the military, and would love the chance to get a cheaper, renewable, readily available supply from a domestic source.

“We’re looking at everything that we feel is a viable science,” said Pam Serino, acting director of the Quality Technical Support Office of Defense Energy Support Center. “This is using waste, even working at a landfill and taking stuff from a landfill.”

Serino has had Bell up to Capitol Hill to brief congressional staffers as well, and yes, Bell believes his process can produce jet fuel.

Needless to say, if this technology works, its potential implications are enormous. Of course, there’s always the chance it won’t work.

But there are an awful lot of people out there who think America cannot maintain its present lifestyle simply because, they think, we will one day run out of energy sources to power it. Barack Obama is running around telling Americans we can no longer eat whatever we want and heat our homes to 72 degrees.

Isn’t it more likely that some sort of technology or innovation will change the rules of the game long before fossil fuels run out, assuming they ever would? Maybe it will come from J.C. Bell and his cow fart inspiration. Maybe it will come from someone and something else.

But it will come. The rewards of achieving it are simply too great for some entrepreneur not to figure it out.

Just when you think America is over, American ingenuity makes you feel dumb for ever worrying in the first place.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

This is Column # DC176.  Request permission to publish here.