{"id":5416,"date":"2008-06-17T10:38:58","date_gmt":"2008-06-17T10:38:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/06\/oil-excreting-bugs.html"},"modified":"2008-06-17T10:38:58","modified_gmt":"2008-06-17T10:38:58","slug":"oil-excreting-bugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/06\/oil-excreting-bugs.html","title":{"rendered":"Oil excreting bugs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/news\/environment\/article4133668.ece\">This<\/a> is what I love about America, the environmentalists and their willing accomplices in Congress put roadblocks in our way to drilling for <s>gas<\/s> oil and someone figures out a workaround:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Ten years ago I could never have imagined I&#8217;d be doing this,&#8221; says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. &#8220;I mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to &#8211; especially the ones coming out of business school &#8211; this is the one hot area everyone wants to get into.&#8221;<br \/>\nHe means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs &#8211; very, very small ones &#8211; so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.<br \/>\n[&#8230;]<br \/>\nMr 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 (\u00a370) from Saudi Arabia obsolete. &#8220;All of us here &#8211; everyone in this company and in this industry, are aware of the urgency,&#8221; Mr Pal says.<br \/>\n[&#8230;]<br \/>\n&#8220;Our plan is to have a demonstration-scale plant operational by 2010 and, in parallel, we&#8217;ll be working on the design and construction of a commercial-scale facility to open in 2011,&#8221; says Mr Pal, adding that if LS9 used Brazilian sugar cane as its feedstock, its fuel would probably cost about $50 a barrel.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m glad that someone is researching ways to get around the Democrats in Congress. And since <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20080617\/ap_on_el_pr\/mccain;_ylt=Alb7IPvfx9BPA7Gaej1XRbOs0NUE\">Obama has stated that he doesn&#8217;t support off shore drilling<\/a> (even though China is drilling off our shores) and is OK with higher gas prices, we&#8217;ll need to find our oil in other places if he&#8217;s president.<br \/>\nBTW, isn&#8217;t this an interesting answer <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/04\/praying-for-lower-gas-prices.html\">to prayer<\/a>? The Lord certainly works in mysterious ways \ud83d\ude42<br \/>\nUpdate: 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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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: &#8220;Ten years ago I could never have imagined I&#8217;d be doing this,&#8221; says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[399,410,398],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-2","category-science-2","category-technology-2"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Oil excreting bugs - Reformed Chicks Blabbing<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/06\/oil-excreting-bugs.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Oil excreting bugs - Reformed Chicks Blabbing\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"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: &#8220;Ten years ago I could never have imagined I&#8217;d be doing this,&#8221; says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/06\/oil-excreting-bugs.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Reformed Chicks Blabbing\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-06-17T10:38:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Susan Johnson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Oil excreting bugs - Reformed Chicks Blabbing","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/06\/oil-excreting-bugs.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Oil excreting bugs - Reformed Chicks Blabbing","og_description":"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: &#8220;Ten years ago I could never have imagined I&#8217;d be doing this,&#8221; says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/06\/oil-excreting-bugs.html","og_site_name":"Reformed Chicks Blabbing","article_published_time":"2008-06-17T10:38:58+00:00","author":"Susan Johnson","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/06\/oil-excreting-bugs.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/06\/oil-excreting-bugs.html","name":"Oil excreting bugs - Reformed Chicks Blabbing","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-06-17T10:38:58+00:00","dateModified":"2008-06-17T10:38:58+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/#\/schema\/person\/b4e41455e911277a4681a65e81271065"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/06\/oil-excreting-bugs.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/06\/oil-excreting-bugs.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/06\/oil-excreting-bugs.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Oil excreting bugs"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/","name":"Reformed Chicks Blabbing","description":"Politics and current events from a Reformed perspective, by Michele McGinty","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/#\/schema\/person\/b4e41455e911277a4681a65e81271065","name":"Susan Johnson","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/020\/02041661cf28a19369e083191c05c819x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/020\/02041661cf28a19369e083191c05c819x96.jpg","caption":"Susan Johnson"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/author\/sjohnson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}