God help us. The libs (especially our savior, Osama Obama) are reinventing science again without any consideration for the cost to the end user and the economic impacts....just to keep the "green vote". Such useless morons.
This is old, proven technology. It will work......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Tropsch_process
This has nothing to do with the green vote. And I suspect the greens wouldn't like this anyway. I am convinced that there is enough oilshale and coal for gassification to last us many lifetimes. The cost of oil would have to reach and STAY at a certain level for this to be cost effective. People who build these plants need some guarantees or they are not going to build them.
Actually, this is a really sensible thing. SASOL has been converting coal to oil in South Africa at about $25 per barrel for decades, profitably. It's a multi billion dollar company so it's not a little green startup looking to fleece some investors.
We are the Saudi Arabia of coal. This technology, and nuclear, are the closest current technologies to making us energy independent.