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It’s nearly 4 years later (since this article). Anyone know what the current state of progress is? Found the following in Wikipedia but it doesn’t really give an updated progress report:

Thermal depolymerization

Main article: Thermal depolymerization

Thermal depolymerization (TDP) is an important new process for the reduction of complex organic materials into light crude oil. These materials may include non oil-based waste products, such as old tires, offal, wood and plastic. The process mimics the natural geological processes thought to be involved in the production of fossil fuels. Under pressure and heat, long chain polymers of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon decompose into short-chain petroleum hydrocarbons.

Conversion efficiencies can be very high: Working with turkey offal as the feedstock, the process proved to have yield efficiencies of approximately 85%. That is, the end products contained 85% of the energy contained in the inputs to the process - most notably the energy content of the feedstock, but also accounting for electricity for pumps and natural gas for heating.

It has been estimated that in the United States, agricultural waste alone could be used to produce 3.7 billion barrels of oil per year. The USA currently consumes 7.5 billion barrels (232.5 billion US gallons) of oil per year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel