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Captain Bill, you must re-read what I wrote. It is the act of striking a match and setting it to oil which releases more energy than you put in. This is of course because oil comes to us as a ready-made fuel, whose energy was paid for by the nuclear furnace of the sun. If one were to argue that the energy cost of creating the match were more than what was released from the oil by way of the First Law, they would be incorrect.
Seawater comes to us as a ready made fuel. As it turns out, it holds less (chemical) energy than would be required to liberate it. My point was that this wasn't necessarily so.
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