Using Bacteria to make oil?

**Skeptical** · Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 8:15 am Post subject: Using Bacteria to make oil?

Some of the propeller-heads out in Silicon Valley have been doing a little genetic-engineering and they've come up with a new bacterium that eats agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw and excretes crude oil!

Here is the link:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4133668.ece

They've got some work to do but, if they can make this cost effective, the implications of this are huge. Oil will become a renewable resource that can be manufactured with little or no impact to the environment. Now that might be a good thing - but I still worry that it will prolong our dependence on the stuff and slow down our transition to newer, cleaner energy alternatives.

S
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"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have." -- Thomas Jefferson

**Carol Nistri** · Joined: 16 Jun 2007 Posts: 3292

oh now wouldnt this just be a hoot,and the saddest thing. All this time we could have been working towards this end,instead the world is about to explode because of oil,or a lack of it. More power to these guys.I hope ethenol is finished before it gets started,its driving prices up all over the supermarkets.Corn is nearly as important to our lives as oil.

**Skeptical** · Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 10:12 am Post subject:

Considering the mountains of garbage we generate in this country every day, it would be kind of cool to be able to use some of it to create oil. We just can't keep burying it in landfills and hope that it will go away.

Frankly, that might be an interesting experiment - take an existing landfill and turn these microbes loose - in a couple of years we might have a fairly significant oil deposit.

S

Just as a side note, there is something here in Cincinnati called Mount Rumke (Rum-kee). It is the highest point in the entire metropolitan area and it is the landfill (named after the refuse company that created it). It towers several hundred feet above the surrounding terrain. Scary to think how much toxic stuff is buried there. Sad

_________________
"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have." -- Thomas Jefferson