I always thought that you can get better living through Chemistry.
As for oil or Gold from water the best one can do, is spend a ton of money to create either. More $$ than the end product and it will take more ENERGY then the final product.
Still if you were an Alchemist maybe you could merge Maine with Taxachusetts and live happily ever after
Actually, Mass used to be a part of Maine, but we kicked them out. Now they're coming back and killing the state. 50% of the state's 1.5 million population lives within 50 miles of Portland (RAT). The rest of the state seems to have it's mind right, but always gets slapped down in the legislature.
Actually, the only one I've seen that makes any sense is the utilization of algae. If you properly situated an energy facility in a tropical location with lots of sunlight and water, you could use solar heat for much of the process.
Shallow ponds are used to grow the algae, using the sun's heat to concentrate and ferment it, and lens-focused heat to distill it would give you alcohol with the only cost being for labor and paying off the plant's initial cost and maintenance.
Also, dried algae can yield triglycerides which can then be extracted and converted to biodiesel.
Cool dry climate...fogetaboutit.
But oil is cheap now, so this would only make sense for poor tropical places that don't have any.