I agree with your analysis. My point was only that LNC won't have a monopoly on this if it works; so that means subsequent projects might be more difficult to develop; also I suspect if its succesful in the end you'll have consolidation of the sector to some degree; none of this is necessarily bad for LNC; I was responding to stormboy's comment:
"LNC takes proven ctg,gtl clean affordable tech to the rest of the world. 25% of the worlds population is developing and will reqire huge amounts of energy.the method and timeing should be perfict. it all comes down to LNC being ale to deliver. i wounder what future generations will say about LNC"
Now there is a big difference between LNC and Microsoft; Microsoft has a monopoly market position and IP rights which it defends vigorously; that's the sort of position which would be great to develop in the energy sector and even better if I had a piece of it.
For now I would say LNC should finish what they have started and get the pilot plant running;
Now if PB (or JonF) are reading this here's some free advice:
In long term I'd like to see some IP rights/technology; given they have a lead on others in terms of actual trial burns etc they are in a position to do this and so protect the franchise as long as possible and to add value to their current position. It would also help them make their process better;
The ways to do it are to look at the scalability of this process; I don't think it scales well; maybe a 5000 - 6000 bpd plant is feasible; but larger than that could be a headache; so in parallel with developing the first 6000 bpd plant they could look into testing various methods to improve the scalability - that could include steam/oxygen burning; greater injection rates; etc. perhaps they are planning to do this.
They should also stop the bio-algae R&D and pump that million dollars into their core process; later they can look into carbon capture and storage, preferably with a partner who has experience to bring to the table and with which to share the risks/costs; to reduce CO2 and improve efficiency they could also look at optimising the burn to strip the higher hydrocarbons off the coal at relatively low temperatures to make a H2 rich syngas and leave a carbon rich residue behind. a cheap way to do that would be worth billions IMO, but probably you can only achieve a small incremental improvement - but that will still be worth millions at scale.
By leveraging their current process and experience and optimising it they should be in a good position to increase the value of the Chincilla project and at the same time stay ahead of others; that will mean they will be sought out as a JV partner of choice in other UCG projects;
So becoming the Microsoft for UCG would be a nice vision wouldn't it?
I think LNC see themselves like this, but I don't see the technical side coming through yet.
just my thoughts;
LNC Price at posting:
0.0¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held