They could stop with the DME and use it as a clean burning diesel fuel but it would probably require a different fuel tank, pump, and injector setup. It does seem that the future will involve more NG being used one way or another for transportation fuel.

Why export LNG when you can produce efined products such as these (methanol, DME, GTL, etc.)?

Chenieri's liquefaction plant will cost at least $6.5 Billion while this will supposedly cost $1.3B. I'd be interested to know which one is more profitable per MMBtu of natural gas input...

Methanol works, in the 1980s California had a test program with 1000s of Ford Taurus running on M100, the program was a success.

LNG happens because countries like Japan will pay 5 times the wholesale rate in the U.S. Resources will go where money can be made, even if it does not make a lot of sense nor do a lot of good.

@e-p: NG may not be cheap for decades, but close to it. There are many, many NG wells that have been drilled in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas but not produced - they are just sitting there ready to be fracked. These will gradually be used as existing producing NG wells are depleted, thus stabilizing prices for a long time to come. Eventually, when/if prices do start to rise, the oil & gas industry will shift assets back from crude to NG (fracking for crude is where the money is right now). And when they start drilling for NG again in large numbers, the same thing will happen - they will drill many more wells than necessary and drive the price back down.

If you have an inventory of some 500,000,000 cars in the world, and lots of cheap, clean fuel that cannot be used by them.

Is is smarter to replace those 500 million cars with those able to burn the new gaseous fuel or is it wiser to build some few conversion facilities that convert the clean gaseous fuel to clean liquid fuel that the existing 500 million cars can consume?

The answer is obvious and we should be doing so. Especailly as htese new clean fuels can be tailored to produce the new targetted fuel characteristics.

Private industry is doing so. But for all the pompous chatter by the governmental bureaucrats, the government(s) are certainly not helping do so. I'm sure these new facilities are as encumbered as ever with red tape, multiple and conflicting permits, EPA siting baloney, etc.

There does not seem to be even an attempt by the government to accelerate permitting and ameliorate those concerns.

@D: I totally agree. Boone Pickens has been trying to get vehicles converted to burn NG - but I think it is better to convert domestically produced NG into gasoline that can be used in existing ICE vehicles (with no modifications needed). I think the only reason this project is moving forward is because of the projected profit margins for G2X energy. If after the project is completed and if they start making a lot of money, do you think they will probably be gobbled up by one of the major global oil companies, even if it would create a situation where the multi-national oil company would be competing against itself?

@e-p: Isn't your math (their potential profit margin) what is driving the project? NG purchased at $1.10 GGE and refined gasoline sold at $3.50 gallon = $2.40 gallon profit?

Henry hub price for NG is around $3.50/mmBTU, around 40¢/gge.  At 50% efficiency, feedstock costs $0.80/gallon.  The plant costs $1.3 billion and the web site claims 65,000 tons of MeOH/yr.  The amortization at 10% over 20 years is $12.5 million/yr, or about 50¢/gallon of methanol.  Roughly double that for the cost of gasoline, assuming it's just deoxygenated methanol at half the mass (it's somewhat less).

If you raise the price of NG to the shale gas cost of $7.50/mmBTU, feedstock goes to $1.70/gallon, total cost to $2.70/gallon.  This is barely competitive with petroleum.  If NG goes to halfway between the cost of shale gas and the world price of $15/mmBTU, cost goes to about $3.60/gallon.  Meanwhile, one gge of NG would cost only $1.30 at Henry hub prices (probably $2/gge retail).

In an energy-constrained world, the only reason you'd ever want to convert NG to commodity fuels at 50% efficiency is if you can't get it to market any other way.

The current fracced NG supply will not last for decades.  The decline rate of these wells is on the order of 80% in their FIRST year; as soon as the "drill it or lose it" contracts are finished, the supply will contract swiftly.

Even if fracced NG costs upwards of $8 or even $10 per million BTU, it still makes great sense as motor fuel; it's both clean and cheap compared to petroleum.  This is part of the resistance to allowing CNG/LNG vehicles; that substitution would upset an apple cart which includes a lot of powerful interests.

That is also why I want to see it happen.

@e-p: Clearly you make a compelling argument about the economics of NG in and of itself. However, there doesn't seem to be any significant government funding or potential tax breaks incentivizing these projects - it is being driven primarily by private sector cost/benefit analyses. Therefore there must be some significant projected profit margin involved, however wasteful this process may be....ie. getting it to the markets in the form where there is the most demand (gasoline). The market does not want NG vehicles (because of the conversion costs?) - it wants petro-gas vehicles.

"You can buy an 80 cubic foot SCUBA tank for under $200"

Or you can blow up your house killing yourself and your children. Launch projectiles at your neighbors too!

Why? To save a few pennies a day!

I work in the nuclear industry and I can tell you what the cost of safety is. We have to show we do not accidentally kill people.

Wing nut generally just kill themselves and their families. However, to do something on a large scale requires that the equipment and service providers show that it meet safety standards. The saving go away.