| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015486)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015486" |
| ocrPages: 1 |
| ocrChars: 2598 |
| ocrElapsed: 0.0 |
| parseTier: "external-legacy" |
| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
| externalSource: "greg-ep-nov-12" |
| externalLicense: "not granted" |
| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| NAUTILUS EDUCATION BETA PRODUCT |
| cost as little as $2 per gallon, or about half the price |
| gas currently goes for at local pumps, to produce at a |
| full-sized facility, even though such an industrial plant |
| would require a lot of capital to build. |
| However, the machine Fang shows me is not run- |
| ning on the biomass that Fang originally tested: wood |
| chips, switchgrass, canary grass, miscanthus. Instead, |
| it churns through natural gas, turning methane into |
| syngas. Making long hydrocarbons from the single car- |
| bon in methane molecules is "very easy," he assures |
| me. But "natural gas is not true green," he concedes. |
| "There is no benefit in [the reduction of] greenhouse |
| gases. Biomass is still true green." |
| Natural gas from the fracking boom has revolution- |
| ized the global energy landscape—particularly in the |
| United States, the world's biggest producer of shale |
| gas. But it is also controversial. Gas burns cleaner, but |
| it still produces around half the greenhouse emissions |
| of its dirtier cousins like coal, not including the excess |
| methane that leaks from fracking sites and the pipe- |
| lines that transport the gas. Fracked gas can also con- |
| taminate groundwater supplies. And while in 2012 it |
| brought America's carbon footprint down to its low- |
| est level in 20 years, relying on it in the long-term will |
| make it hard to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, as |
| is required to combat climate change. |
| As the price of natural gas slid in response to the |
| glut of shale gas, Primus changed gears in mid-2012 |
| to move away from biomass and to focus on making |
| syngas from natural gas. This is not a new idea: Exx- |
| onMobil built a plant in New Zealand in 1986 to turn |
| natural gas into methanol and then gasoline, but aban- |
| doned its efforts when the price of petroleum dropped |
| dramatically in the mid 1990s. Now, though, natural |
| gas is cheap and attractive. Boyajian has a map of all |
| the shale formations in North America tacked to the |
| wall of his office. "The world is full of shale," he notes. |
| An earlier version of Primus' machine, tuned to pro- |
| cess biomass, sits swathed in silvery insulating tape |
| in a locked and darkened lab. "Right now it is aban- |
| doned" Fang says. The company insists that the state- |
| ment doesn't apply to Primus's biomass efforts more |
| generally. "This is the way to get to biofuels," says Pri- |
| mus CEO Robert Johnsen, of the gas to gasoline pro- |
| cess, through a tight smile. "Will we be the ones to get |
| there? Maybe." |
| The energy in these fuels |
| is the pent-up power of |
| ancient sunlight, which |
| billions of photosynthetic |
| microorganisms soaked up |
| before dying. |
| 26 |
| HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015486 |
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