Greenland bans all oil exploration

Re:Greenland bans all oil exploration by adrianN on Sunday July 18, 2021 @10:50AM (#27873413)

With enough energy you can make plastic out of CO2 and water. So it's an economic question: What happens when oil is no longer useful as fuel? Will it be cheaper to just synthesize the hydrocarbons you need, or will it be cheaper to keep some of the oil infrastructure running?

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Re:Greenland bans all oil exploration by Robotbeat on Sunday July 18, 2021 @11:00AM (#27873494)

I have no idea why you're being down-voted. You literally can make any hydrocarbons we get from crude using synthesis gas (from CO2 and water split into hydrogen) using the Fischer-Tropsch process: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces...

Are folks just not aware of this, so they think people who say you can "make plastic out of CO2 and water" are talking hand-wavy nonsense?

The process is used commercially today in Qatar, Malaysia, and South Africa plus has had pilot plants in the US. But many of these US pilot plant efforts stopped when the price of oil cratered. So again, we absolutely do have alternatives to crude oil, it's just a function of economics.

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Re:Greenland bans all oil exploration by inglor_cz on Sunday July 18, 2021 @12:16PM (#27874120)

We can also play with some alternatives such as artificial spider silk. This is an opportunity not just to ape current methods, but actually come with something completely new.

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