As you know, gasoline is made from oil, but an old technology which allows to produce diesel from natural gas, developped in Germany in the 1920s and refined by South Africa in the 70s and 80s is now being pushed in big way by the big oil majors.
It's called GTL - gas to liquids.
There is a big article in today's WSJ (sorry, no link, it's subscription only anyway) about the big plants which are currently being built in Qatar, the small emirate which is located on a peninsula between Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf and sits on top of the North Field, the largest single hydrocarbon reservoir on the planet - and, as opposed to its big neighbors like Saudia Arabia and Iran, is willing to work with foreign oil companies to exploit its potential.
It has already built the largest gas liquefaction plants (transforming gas into LNG in order to export it by tanker) and is now in the process of buidilng massive GTL factories - the industrial area is "twice the size of Manhattan" to give you an idea of the scale of the endeavor.
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(I am sorry if this text is poor in links, I am writing from an airport terminal with limited internet features...it's impossible to cut and paste links)
The important point about GTL is that it is quite expensive (it probably costs 15-20$ to produce the equivalent of a barrel of oil) and that it thus requires a long term high-prices environment for it to be worth investing in.
The logical consequence of that point is that, as we see the oil majors investing, it means that they are beginning to work with higher long term price assumptions and this is likely to significnatly change their investment patterns.
The other interesting thing about GTL is that it is a scaleable technology (i.e., factories of different sizes can be built), which means that it is a great way to exploit "stranded reserves", i.e. gas reserves that are significant in volumes but too far away from existing infrastructure to be economic to develop. with GTL, you just need to build your plant on or near the field, and you get diesel coming out, which you can transport by boat, rail or even trucks to service the local market.
Another point to note is that GTL makes an extremely clean fuel - it will thus provide an easy way foe the oil majors to provide gasoline (at least diesel) that meets the most stringent anti-pollution norms - it has no sulfur, no particles - and it can be used in today's engines.
This means several things:
- peak oil is not there yet. With "Big oil" oil prices assumptions now being obviously above 20$, many hitherto uneconomica lreserves will be exploited, thus providing more barrels from the same reservoirs;
- GTL opens up a serious alternative for petroleum-based transportation - economic under current prices, cleaner, and coming form another resource with slightly different repartition around the world (Russia has 40% of reserves and Iran 30%, which does not sound good, but remember that the interest of GTL is that it can be used to exploit smaller fields anywhere in the world, thus opening up many new possibilities in other countries - it's not Saudi Arabia - or Iraq - anyway)
- GTL also provides, in all likelihood, a cap to future gasoline prices, as gas reserves are currently a lot plentiful than oil and the technology can be used everywhere
The flip side of that, of course, is that such technological progress is likely to dampen any efforts to reduce our energy consumption, and will only push the problem by a couple decades. But energy use is fundamentally a political and societal problem (taxes, urban planning, transportation policy including mass transit systems, and anti-pollution norms, etc...), which needs to be solved domestically, not by the supply side.
In any case, the industry will respond to price signales and will invest in technologies that make sense if they are economic, whether on their own (like GTL seems to be now) or with the appropriate subsidies (like wind power with a bit a help and solar power with a lot of help) - so don't just expect an energy crunch yet, but do expect prices to be on the rise, with new plateaus reached around the level where such new technologies make economic sense, and fluctuations around for politicla/strategic reasons...
Again, sorry for the lack of links