is this technology flawed ?, page-3

The following article from the Australain Business Journal gives plenty of insight into that question. Len Walker covers some very important aspects.

http://www.australianbusinessjournal.com.au/cougar-energy/

Part of the article reads:

But other misconceptions about the technology also exist, and it is therefore plain to see why education is such a big part of Walker?s mission both inside and independently of Cougar Energy today. One such myth in the information received by newly interested parties is inaccurate reporting related to the two separate methods in UCG: the inseam borehole (CRIP) technology developed in the U.S.A., and the vertical drilling method which harks back to the Former Soviet Union.

?Contrary to popular reporting, the Russians used inseam boreholes as well, so it is not unique to the CRIP system. I visited the former Soviet Union operating site for the first time in 1997 and they had been operating inseam drill holes for at least 40 years.? Walker explains.

Walker says that the technology developed by his UCG partners at Ergo Exergy Technologies Inc. is generally flexible in using both vertical and inseam injection and production holes as dictated by specifics of the coal geology of a given coalfield, while the CRIP system involves both the injection hole and production hole being inseam.

?The distinction between the technologies is not really inseam verus vertical drillholes in principle. The most important factor in assessing the two technologies in my view is that, within the former Soviet Union, the technology akin to one being used by Cougar has been used to gasify 20 million tonnes and operated at commercial scale, whereas the CRIP system has gasified less than 50,000 tonnes,? he explains.

?This distinction is most important to us, and is why we at Cougar are working with the Ergo Exergy technology. It?s the only one which has been expanded and developed at commercial scale and there are significant differences between doing an isolated test of 10,000 tonnes of coal, the biggest CRIP test in the U.S., and a commercial project which might be gasifying one million tonnes a year. My UCG partners are the only ones who have managed an operating plant on a commercial scale.?