Harry Veeder <[email protected]> wrote: If oil is not needed for fuel and plastics, what markets will be left > for the oil industry? >
With cold fusion I predict there will be no markets left for the oil industry. It will eventually be cheaper, safer and easier to manufacture hydrocarbons on site from water and carbon, using cold fusion energy. That is to say, it will cheaper than it is to make holes in the ground, pump the stuff out, and ship it hundreds or thousands of miles. Water and carbon are available locally everywhere, at virtually no cost. Even now they make oil from organic waste with depolymerization. Carbon may even be extracted from the CO2 in the air. We may need to do this on a massive scale to reverse global warming. Shipping huge amounts of oil on tankers, trucks and pipelines makes no sense when you can make all you want anywhere on demand with local materials that are safe and convenient, such as water and air. This is especially true because the amount of oil needed for plastic feedstock and other non-fuel uses is only about 10% of what we now use. It makes not sense to maintain a gigantic fleet of tankers and pipelines for 1/10th of the present demand. I described this in my book. I predict that cold fusion will eventually eliminate the oil and coal industries, and -- sometime after that -- all electric power companies. - Jed
