This is what I love about America, the environmentalists and their willing accomplices in Congress put roadblocks in our way to drilling for gas oil and someone figures out a workaround:

“Ten years ago I could never have imagined I’d be doing this,” says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. “I mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to – especially the ones coming out of business school – this is the one hot area everyone wants to get into.”

He means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.
[…]
Mr Pal is a senior director of LS9, one of several companies in or near Silicon Valley that have spurned traditional high-tech activities such as software and networking and embarked instead on an extraordinary race to make $140-a-barrel oil (£70) from Saudi Arabia obsolete. “All of us here – everyone in this company and in this industry, are aware of the urgency,” Mr Pal says.
[…]
“Our plan is to have a demonstration-scale plant operational by 2010 and, in parallel, we’ll be working on the design and construction of a commercial-scale facility to open in 2011,” says Mr Pal, adding that if LS9 used Brazilian sugar cane as its feedstock, its fuel would probably cost about $50 a barrel.

I’m glad that someone is researching ways to get around the Democrats in Congress. And since Obama has stated that he doesn’t support off shore drilling (even though China is drilling off our shores) and is OK with higher gas prices, we’ll need to find our oil in other places if he’s president.
BTW, isn’t this an interesting answer to prayer? The Lord certainly works in mysterious ways 🙂
Update: The commenters are confused so I thought I would make this clear: the Democrats are standing in the way of drilling for oil so I’m glad that we can find workarounds to drilling since they are stopping us from the 85 billion gallons of oil that has been estimated off the coast of our shores.