Indonesia is going to build a million barrel a day coal-to-liquid plant.
China is in the planning stages with Sasol to do the same thing.
The difference is that they take energy seriously. I want to see us take our energy independence at least as seriously as they do. We should be building a coal-to-liquid plant in every coal producing state. At the scale Indonesia is planning, it would only take two of them to replace Persian Gulf oil.
Just two.
The problem is economic. Truly replacing Persian Gulf oil with more expensive oil would place us at an economic disadvantage to those nations using the cheaper oil. And the cheaper oil would be quite cheap minus the US market.
Let projects like this go through and the oil market will adjust to find some good-as-it-gets equilibrium.
That's how I see it, anyway.
Sasol has been doing it in South Africa since the ‘60s and was also heavily involved through licensing of the “Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis” process at PetroSA (previously Mossgas).
Sasol (Google the name) started out and still is converting coal into petrol - aka gasoline - and other petro chemical products.
Natural gas conversion using a similar process started at Mossel Bay in South Africa in the late ‘80s,early ‘90s. Runour has it that their offshore gas fields are drying and will be out of natural gas soon.
The process has been in operation for decades and is nothing new.