Oil from Coal: We Wouldn't Run Out
Trott, Harlan
For half a century the oil interests have blocked a process which could assure the U.S. production of ample oil Oil from Coal: We Wouldn't Run Out HARLAN TROTT There is enough sound technical...
...Early Bureau of Mines tests in commercial-scale plants at Rifle, Colorado, proved oil could be made from coal for nothing a barrel when processed in series with a steam-generated electric power plant using its off-peak steam to produce fuel gas, crude oil for cracking into gasoline, smokeless fuel, and liquid chemicals worth more than the cost of the raw coal itself—all in conjunction with its output of electricity...
...The late E. V. Murphree, president of Standard Oil of New Jersey's Development Company, filed a patent on the underground extraction of oil from shale shortly before his death in 1962...
...The bids ran to a total of $465 million, whereas the Department had expected a maximum of $50 million...
...production of ample oil Oil from Coal: We Wouldn't Run Out HARLAN TROTT There is enough sound technical data on record to suggest the energy crisis is an artificial one, conceived by oil men and brought forth in government default...
...Some public speculation centers on the suspicion that domestic petroleum reserves generally are much larger than Big Oil cares to admit...
...The data also indicate that anything shale can do to fill the energy gap, coal can do better...
...George Otis Smith, Director of the U.S...
...Utah and Colorado really started this work...
...Rexco is using gas generated by the process to heat the coal charge in its forty-ton retorts...
...Thanks to Senator Reed Smoot, I got Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover's help (the Bureau of Mines was in Commerce then...
...I have those data here...
...All of a sudden we found ourselves transferred out of the Rocky Mountains to Pittsburgh...
...I have the press table to myself...
...The idea that the big oil companies could reach out to control alternative sources of fuel and power seemed too fantastic to believe...
...A number of important new processes were developed which are embraced in patents issued to me for the production of low-cost oils, fuel gases, smokeless fuels, low-cost electric power, and chemical by-products...
...While what has come to be called the Karrick process may be regarded as "primitive," Ayers said it was an "interesting process" because the "ratio of national demands for liquid fuel for electric power and other essential coal users is not far away from the ratio of yields from low temperature carbonization and is expected to balance before 1980 because demand for electric energy is growing more rapidly than demand for liquid fuel...
...I am a mining and chemical engineer with thirty years' experience studying the coals, oil shales, peat, and other carbonaceous deposits of the United States and some foreign countries...
...These processes were designed for use as adjuncts to steam power plants, so as to use the off-peak steam or other steam available for the peat or coal-distilling operations...
...It will give from ten to thirty per cent more heating efficiency because there are no losses up the stack...
...At that time George Otis Smith was head of the Geological Survey, and I served under him...
...He has contributed to the London Observer, The American Banker, and The Economist...
...Representative Ken Regan of Texas, chairman of the Subcommittee on Mines and Mining, taps his gavel...
...After suffering the crunch of arrogant power the oil interests have brought to bear in the current crisis, the American people can well agree with Senator Douglas that such power is far from fantastic...
...Gas for household fuel purposes...
...An erect, professorial man in his sixties with owlish, nickel-rimmed spectacles begins testifying in a Rocky Mountain drawl: "My name is Lewis C. Karrick...
...Cracked coke high in B.T.U...
...Therefore it transmits more heat, and there is practically no unburned carbon in the ashes, so people would get this fuel at no increased cost...
...This was how it looked to the chief research chemist of one of the oil majors more than twenty years ago...
...He is the author of "Ships for What...
...The way crude oil prices are shooting up, we are likely any day to back into this promised economic breakthrough that will make shale oil competitive with petroleum— on the industry's terms...
...There is no soot...
...How promising these prospects are—and how real the obstructions being placed in their way—came into sharp focus one day when I was reporting on the energy crisis caused by the Korean War...
...Since then I have directed research at the University of Utah to prove those things, to offset information that is being put out by the Bureau and others to the effect that you can't do it...
...Aspinall: "Then, why isn't it done...
...Senator Douglas recalls: "Once in a while a mountain-state Senator would whisper to me that the oil interests had closed down these government demonstration plants because they did not want new sources of supply to come on the market and thus threaten their control...
...These data clearly indicate that when we get around to processing shale, it should be distilled underground, first to keep from littering the landscape with mountains of spent shale, and, second, because it is cheaper...
...This encouraging resource discovery prompted Pennsylvania's progressive Gifford Pinchot to warn: "The fuels trust will never permit the shale-oil and oil-from-coal projects to get developed unless they own them...
...Cracked gasoline which should yield a five cent premium...
...Shale oil will regulate the price of gasoline and assure an unlimited supply of that fuel...
...The appropriate Congressional committees should look into this oil-from-coal question at once with a view to repeating everything Karrick and his co-workers in the Bureau of Mines proved at Rifle, Colorado, prior to 1930, with respect to the highest and best use of our coal and oil shales...
...It is a better shale oil than that extracted from oil shale itself...
...He explained that "the tar can be converted to liquid fuels, while the char is an excellent fuel for steam boilers...
...We estimated we could distill the oil shales underground and produce oil for a good deal less than $1 a barrel, or if we used either of the two commercial-scale plants we built at Rifle in 1920-1926, we could make oil for $1.50 to $2 a barrel...
...it is hard enough for metallurgical uses, and ideal for firing the boilers of steam-generated power plants...
...It yields as much oil per ton, plus valuable by-products, which makes it cheaper than shale oil...
...You have a situation almost ideal in that your process produces: "1...
...I was at Boulder two or three years when that city was the headquarters of the Bureau of Mines work...
...It is a better oil...
...He said to me: "You men have proved something more valuable than any other researchers in the Federal Government...
...We worked out the methods to do this when I was in the oil shale work and had the title of oil shale technologist for the Bureau...
...To produce any significant quantity of liquid fuels by coal carbonization would "glut an already saturated solid-fuels market with fantastic quantities of unsaleable char...
...It is Friday, May 12, 1950, cold and rainy around the nation's Capitol...
...But they will not touch coal, using the same process, because, in the handwritten words of a Justice Department lawyer: "The world oil cartel fears the cheap production of oil from coal might bring about a reduction in price...
...Yet the major oil firms still talk about "mining" oil shale just as though they never heard of underground distillation...
...Presumably, the majors conceal their true figures on untapped reserves, not altogether to avoid paying higher property taxes, but because it is industry policy—as studies pursuant to Senate Resolution 36 of the Seventy-ninth Congress reveal—to stabilize maximum gasoline prices by perpetually maintaining a hair's-breadth balance between "known" crude supplies and market demand...
...We now know we have enough cheap oils in our coals to last forever...
...We keep hearing there are billions of miles of future freeway driving locked up in the vast oil shales of the Harlan Trott worked for The Christian Science Monitor for more than two decades as a reporter, editorial writer, Washington correspondent, New York bureau chief, and San Francisco correspondent...
...It was the time of Teapot Dome, when many people thought that was the last big source of oil in the country...
...This oil-for-nothing-a-barrel prospect poses such a threat to what oil expert Harvey O'Connor calls The Empire of Oil, it may be holding back oil-from-coal development simply because Federal administrators are being misinformed by their "experts" or are themselves deliberately confusing and scaring away private venture capital by giving out wrong information about revolutionary new technological processes...
...Karrick: "That is right...
...And if the solid smokeless fuel were sold wholesale at raw smoky coal prices, then the oil would cost nothing...
...Look," he told Karrick after Standard had run tests on two barrels of oil distilled from Hocking Valley coal, "we're not in the coal business...
...But if the prospect of converting coal to oil is financially all that enticing, why has not private enterprise invested in an integrated multi-purpose energy operation of that magnitude...
...At that time, the grab for oil was on...
...This water gas may then be purified and made by the Fischer-Tropsch or other processes into crude oil amounting to several times the twenty to twenty-five gallons of oil per ton which results from distilling the raw peat...
...Speaking of this cheaper and better method the Bureau was sidetracking, Ayers stressed that oil can be distilled quite simply from coal...
...But because the Bureau of Mines does not call it oil— which it is, if shale oil is oil—its development has been blocked...
...and "The Schooner That Came Home...
...They were appalled at the thought that it is possible to get oil out of shale without any mining cost, or without the expense of disposing of the spent shale...
...Bureau of Mines and a pilot plant to carbonize coal at low temperature had been built in Colorado...
...A tar suitable for cracking...
...Only a handful of spectators, in dripping raincoats, are on hand to learn of the role the peat bogs of Minnesota can play in helping to meet the country's future energy needs...
...Representative Wayne Aspinall: "Do I understand you to say it is economically feasible at this time to reduce coal to oil...
...Early evidence of such a development came when the Interior Department opened the first bids by the oil companies for the right to exploit oil shale deposits in Federal lands in Colorado...
...The big oil firms apparently plan to start distilling oil from shale...
...Your process of low temperature carbonization of coal tied in with the Dubbs cracking process should provide a handsome profit," Egloff continued...
...A few informed officials both in Federal scientific agencies and the Department of Justice say, unfortunately, yes...
...Western United States—if only, industry spokesmen sigh, we knew how to extract it cheaply enough...
...Bureau of Mines, the Geological Survey, the Navy Department, and for the states of Utah, Colorado, and Ohio, and for eight years director of oil-from-coal research at the University of Utah...
...The revenue from it will pay off the mining and the processing...
...All the oil in the United States was made out of coal up to the time the first oil well was brought in in 1859...
...Neither the technology nor the productive range of its four plants is as spectacular as the multipurpose Karrick approach...
...This is one of the highest grade motor fuels obtainable and in reality is too good for the average present day motor...
...There seems to be enough data lying around loose in Washington to suggest the energy crisis may be due to something more than natural causes...
...From coal were made lubricating oils, greases, lamp oil, and kerosene...
...Also, this solid carbon would be ideal for conversion into a low-cost fuel known as water gas...
...We can crack this coal oil into good quality gasoline...
...The Bureau would not let us work on coal in Colorado or Utah any more...
...The oil companies and their allies in the government scientific agencies can't be all that powerful in blocking it, can they...
...This carbon residue is a much superior fuel for burning in power plants than raw peat, having two or three times the heating value, and will insure much higher fuel efficiency in power-plant use...
...These credits will greatly reduce the cost of the power...
...He said, in effect, that the Government was chasing the wrong rabbit by backing a costly and wasteful technology Standard Oil of New Jersey had acquired from I.G...
...Instead of worthless rock left, you have this smokeless fuel which is very much superior to the original coal...
...If the "tar" is used as a source of gasoline and oil, it requires further processing, and the yield is less than a third that available from other methods now under development by the Bureau of Mines...
...The treatment of peat simultaneously produces valuable fuel gas suited for domestic and industrial uses, and leaves a solid smokeless residue of carbon...
...He said this coal hydrogenation process was not necessary "because of the existence of simple, low temperature carbonization techniques by which moderate yields of tar are accompanied by major yields of char...
...Clearly, it would be foolish to go over all this ground again without heeding the warning voiced by former Senator Paul Douglas in his memoirs, In the Fullness of Time...
...Incidentally, the process was not followed up in the United States...
...Karrick : "If you get me started on that I may have to use a few bad words...
...Counsel will call the next witness...
...As one long-steeped in the politics of our Federal synthetic liquid fuels posture, I am concerned but not surprised by the oil industry's silence on this subject, particularly on the idea of making oil from coal...
...It would be suitable for blending purposes in a similar manner to benzol...
...Universal's distinguished Gustav Egloff, onetime president of the American Institute of Chemists, wrote Karrick: "I am enclosing a complete report on cracking your low temperature coal tar...
...In my opinion the oils obtainable from peat, by distillation with steam, should be recovered by these simple and relatively inexpensive processes...
...Geological Survey, explained, "The shales of northwestern Colorado and Utah can produce ten times as much oil as has been removed from wells since the drilling of the first well in 1859...
...we can't put more than $2.50 a barrel on that oil, but your smokeless fuel is worth $5 or $6, so you see it's a coal man's problem, and we can't put a value on your Ohio coal oil above our midcontinent crude...
...We found those good bituminous coals would distill and give as much oil or more than the average oil shale...
...Instead of oil, the major products are "char" and "tar...
...The process we developed in 1926 is now the basis for a flourishing coal-distilling industry operating under the trade name Rexco in England and Scotland...
...Ironically, far from being glutted with smokeless fuels, the country is now pleading with the coal miners —a quarter-century after this bureaucratic putdown of its own tax-supported technology—to accelerate their half-billion-ton yearly output of raw smoky coal...
...It was brought to this country by Coal Research Syndicate, a company which had seen possibilities in developing the American idea...
...Those are the figures and we can prove it now...
...With the discovery of oil in great quantities in the North American continent, however, interest in smokeless fuel waned...
...At the same time that Standard of Indiana was rating oil from Ohio coal on a par with a midcontinent crude, the Universal Oil Products Company—often described as a patent club for the majors—was singing an even more cheerful tune...
...Some fifty years ago Parr explained that distilling coal by low-temperature carbonization—which means removing the rich gas, oils, and chemicals—leaves a solid residue of superior burning properties that is absolutely clean to handle and burn...
...I was made custodian of all the government research data that we had developed up to then on oil from Rocky Mountain coals, and I am still custodian of them...
...There was then no use for gasoline...
...Farben prior to World War II...
...The facts prove that if we were to adopt a national fuels policy based on the highest and best integrated use of all our natural energy resources—as worked out by pioneering government fuels technologists—we could immediately begin encouraging private investment capital to start making oil from coal cheaper than pumping it from wells...
...Incondensible gas from cracking, having 1,300 B.T.U.s per cubic foot...
...Originally it had received encouragement from the U.S...
...Instead, they contended: • The process is "merely one of the least efficient and most obsolete...
...My past work has been largely devoted to conducting researches for the U.S...
...Professor S. W. Parr of the University of Illinois, onetime president of the American Chemical Society, was the fuels chemist of his day...
...Smokeless fuel...
...It is not too fantastic today...
...But the notion that ours is an artificial energy crisis may be valid for another reason, if what industry and government archives tell us is true...
...Although we had to spend the government money on oil shales, we got your Governor Sweet, and Governor Shoup next, to put up state money, also our Governor Bamberger in Utah, and earmarked it for coal...
...I aided in selecting the experimental plants built at Rifle prior to 1926...
...In some ways it struck me that Rexco's conservative management policy was not much different from that expressed by Robert E. Wilson while he was still president of Standard Oil of Indiana...
...All this was pretty unsettling to the Bureau's coal staff, some thirty of whom were invited to supper at the Cosmos Club and a private talk by Eugene Ayers, director of the chemical division of Gulf Oil's research company, a scholar, and an outstanding fuels economist as prestigious throughout the profession as was Professor Parr in his time...
...I was consulting engineer in oil shale, but knew we would make oil out of coal sooner...
...Aspinall: "Do you make the same contention that it is economically feasible to reduce oil shales today in competition with other fuels...
...Bureau of Mines spokesmen disagreed...
...value, ashless and a highgrade smokeless fuel...
...But vastly more important, these early studies showed bituminous coals also could be processed to produce oils in similar plants at $1.50 to $2 a barrel— without any credit for the sales value of the by-product gas and solid fuel residue...
...Tar acids for flotation purposes...
...Karrick: "Yes, sir...
...Yet back in President Coolidge's time, government fuels scientists found they could process oil from shale for about seventy cents a barrel...
...The motor fuel derived from your low temperature coal tar on a tar acid free basis was a sixty-five per cent benzol equivalent...
...The answer, I suspect, lies in the emphasis the Justice Department's chief oil investigator laid on the words "cheap production" in an unsigned note he sent me some twenty years ago explaining "the World Oil Cartel's" opposition to distilling oil from coal...
...The scene: A hearing room in the old House Office Building...
...Thus oil, gas, and a superior solid fuel are made available...
...In a special supplement of the Edinburgh Scotsman, January 14, 1964, an article on the opening of the Comrie plant observed: "The process itself is an American one, having been developed across the Atlantic in the 1920s...
...Ayers's private coal talk proceeded in all fundamental respects to refute the Bureau's public stance discrediting the discoveries of its pioneer coal scientists...
...Now then, we found, too, in the case of oil shale that you distill it, preferably underground...
...You could give the oil away and still make money...
...Parr and his associates insisted that this way of processing coal would be a stepping stone toward the day when all cheap noncoking coals—enough to meet all the nation's energy needs for 2,000 years—would be gasified, and the oils, chemicals, and rich gas saved...
...Alarmed by the waves the Karrick controversy was making in Congress, the Bureau fired off a 5,000-word press release deriding Karrick and all his government-financed works...
Vol. 38 • June 1974 • No. 6
