ExxIt: ExxonMobil exits algae, what’s next?

Bloomberg has reported on a pullback by ExxonMobil from its long-running investments in algae biofuels. You can read Ben Elgin and Kevin Crowley’s crisp reporting here.

For those looking for a compact summary of ExxonMobil and biofuels, here’s my theory.

They were against biofuels because they were too low-yield and expensive, until they found algae, which was too low-yield and expensive, but they said they could work on the yields until they were less expensive. They expected to spend up to $500M on the R&D effort, until they stopped at around $320M . Perhaps that’s because they spent something like $160M on algae television commercials. 

Good news, they increased the yield, after years of R&D, by an order of magnitude. But, wait a minute. On second thought, they’ve concluded that algae is too low-yield and expensive. It might be decades away, and the one thing none of us has is that much time, given all the pressure.

Now, they have focused their efforts on carbon capture, except that it is too low-yield and expensive, but they say they can work on the yields until they are less expensive. So, if they store more carbon in the ground and sell it as a public service, they can extract more carbon from the ground and sell it as a private enterprise. 

Great news, scientists think that underground, carbon dioxide gas eventually becomes a liquid, and then a solid, and because of that, ExxonMobil will become more liquid, and their liquidity will be more solid. Squarely, they become more circular because they have triangulated carbon and petroleum, and they can sell more gas to the Pentagon, and that’s solid.

They were solid for algae except they found that getting the algae out of the liquid wasn’t exactly a gas. Now, they have new technologies to pursue, except they are low-yield and expensive, and they’re going to work on that. It’ll be commercial in the end and, in the meantime, just wait ’til you see the commercials.