A brave new world of fossil fuels at demand

[Tank]

Last Saturday, I paid  79.8 Euro ($ 109)  to fill-up my medium-sized car with petrol. My theory is, that any method to create new fuels becomes economical, if you raise the prices of fossil fuels high enough   .

This is exactly the situation with oil shale. The oil is there but the energy overhead to extract it is much higher than that for liquid crude recovered from conventional sources. Shale oil only becomes economic after a given price per barrel. The other issue with shale oil is that the fuels produced by the process are already inefficient by the time they get used.

[terranus]

Last Saturday, I paid  79.8 Euro ($ 109)  to fill-up my medium-sized car with petrol. My theory is, that any method to create new fuels becomes economical, if you raise the prices of fossil fuels high enough   .

Holy crap, $109?? For one fill-up? Thats insane. I just filled my Jeep up with gas today from E...only cost me $57.

Methinks your theory might be right. We didn't have 10% ethanol in our fuels down here until gas got to a record 4.05/gallon 2 summers ago (which was still some of the cheapest fuel in the nation, btw).