Reply #34: How Chevron spins black gold

[54anickel]

As Big Oil celebrates a huge victory in California, Chevron's chief technologist talks to Business 2.0 about the end of oil, new energy sources, and the $4 billion tax voters shot down.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/11/08/magazines/business2/chevron_innovators.biz2/index.htm

(Business 2.0 Magazine) -- Every oil company likes to claim it's really in the energy business. But at Chevron, chief technology officer Don Paul is seriously thinking about the day the petroleum wells run dry. The first way we'll cope, he says, is by extracting usable fuel out of tar sands, oil shale, and coal.

But fossil fuels are certainly not the future. Paul, who trained as a geophysicist at MIT and got his start at Chevron (Charts) as a researcher three decades ago, has seen multiple waves of technology transform his business. First, computers revolutionized exploration and drilling. Now, Paul argues, nanotech-fueled chemistry is about to put his company into what he calls the molecule business, where it won't refine gasoline anymore - it'll synthesize better, cleaner fuels from scratch.

Of course, any combustion fuel, no matter how cleanly created, still produces climate-changing carbon dioxide when it burns. Paul argues that being headquartered in eco-friendly California has put Chevron at the cutting edge of clean refining technology, and that the company's own R&D efforts have a better shot at getting new energy sources to market, thanks to its distribution infrastructure. Surprisingly, state voters agreed Tuesday, shooting down a proposed $4 billion oil tax. (See Oil tax defeated.)

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Check out the link from that page called Big Oil: Election winner or loser? http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/news/election_sectors/index.html