If anyone was thinking that the gas drilling was coming to an end, here is a bit of information that might help negate those thoughts, I posted it so that no one would have to go trough the trouble of broken links and possible frustration.
I think that this little company will insure that drilling continues for years to come.
University-corporate collaboration leads to gas-to-liquids breakthrough
When 1st Resource Group Chairman F. Conrad Greer, P.E. had an idea for converting stranded natural gas to liquid fuel, he knew his own company was too small to build a laboratory, hire technicians and fund years of research in order to make that happen. He needed a way to partner with someone who had all that and he needed a way for them to be rewarded for their work without a huge investment on the part of 1st Resource.
Actually, the portable gas-to-liquids idea was not his first, so he had already solved that issue. Around 2000, Greer had searched across the country for a university he could partner with in just such a way. The Fort Worth-based company chairman finally found a suitable entity practically in his back yard - the University of Texas at Arlington.
Dr. Ronald L. Elsenbaumer, UTA's vice president for research and government relations, explains, "We started this (gas-to-liquids) as a sponsored research project with 1st Resource, who came to us and basically wanted us to develop a technology like this." So 1st Resource helped fund the research and, in turn, had first rights of refusal to license the technology if UTA was successful in the development phase. The company did indeed exercise their right.
While UTA did the research over a 2-3 year period, they started with ideas put forth by 1st Resources. The base technology for the GTL process is decades old, developed in Germany in the 1920s. What UTA did was to make it work on a smaller scale, both space-wise and production-wise, so it would be suitable for remote stranded-gas locations with smaller input than is available at large refineries where the technology is usually housed.
The great benefit for UTA is that they keep the patents on procedures developed from their research, meaning they have opportunity to earn income for the life of the patent. Elsenbaumer noted it is gratifying for researchers to see their work used productively in the marketplace as well.
As the technology for portable GTL is still brand new, he expects UTA to be involved in the tweaking of the process as it is field tested and new issues become obvious.
Not only does the university benefit from the royalties gleaned from these patents, researchers also are included under a shared agreement, according to Dr. Frederick MacDonnell, associate chair and professor of the chemistry and biochemistry department at UTA. The UT system said, "Okay, to give you guys incentive, you'll get a portion of the royalties -- and it's motivated the faculty to get involved," MacDonnell reported.
He said Ivy League schools like Harvard have done this for a long time, but not everyone in this area is pleased with professors getting royalties. "People have said, 'What do you mean, I'm paying this professor to get rich?'"
The university already has the equipment needed to study the basics of physics and biology, MacDonnell pointed out, but had no incentive to study processes such as Fischer-Tropsch, the one on which the portable GTL is based, until the professors were offered a monetary incentive.
"If the administrator came in and said, 'Now I want you to do this' and I'd say, 'What's in it for me?' He'd say, 'Nothing, and you have to continue teaching all your classes,'" it would not be received well, MacDonnell said. With the offer of keeping part of the patent, that entire conversation changes radically.
Interest in the portable GTL technology has come from every continent except Antarctica, said 1st Resource's Clyde Pittman, director of corporate planning, who is also a principle and founder of the company. That is just one aspect of what has made this partnership a positive for all parties.
"Our relationship with UTA has been a joy, it really has," he said. "They are an extremely cooperative, competent, very capable and creative group of people. We're looking forward to a long a profitable relationship with them under the programs we've managed to put together collaboratively.
"Until recent years, academia and business sort of remained separate," he continued. Now the business community is seeing universities as a research resource.
With universities in Texas and across the nation facing funding crunches as budgets are balanced, perhaps for-profit business research could replace some of those lost funds and provide benefits to the community at large.
AI
