Bugs and Oil Barrels

A silicon valley firm claims to have genetically engineered a strain of bacteria to produce a petroleum by-product near to distilled gasoline--somehow the company, LS9, has convinced a few E. coli to poop gas, which is the highly technical term. The article goes on to present their claims as well as explain to us their discovery is "carbon-negative".

Can this be true?

Frankly, I'm skeptical. Remember a few years ago in 2003 when turkey offal would be converted into light crude via thermal depolymerization? "It's the silver bullet!" we (or at least I) thought. Five years later, they're still relying on subsidies for a profit and fighting the local government to even stay open (apparently nobody likes the smell of turkey offal).

This current fad for green technology and the resulting gold rush for alternative fuels feels like a haven for snake oil salesmen and hucksters looking for easy money from soft-headed capitalists. This firm's claims sound too much like a penny stock spam email than real scientific results:

Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable petroleum”. After that, he grins, "it’s a brave new world".

or (emphasis mine)

Bob Walsh, 50, who now serves as the firm’s president after a 26-year career at Shell, most recently running European supply operations in London. "How many times in your life do you get the opportunity to grow a multi-billion-dollar company?" he asks. It is a bold statement from a man who works in a glorified cubicle in a San Francisco industrial estate for a company that describes itself as being "prerevenue".

As much as I want to believe we can simply grow gas and lesson our dependence on imported oil (and I do hope we get there one day), the truth of the matter is our foreseeable future lies in oil pipelines and not in pipe dreams.