You Don't Need Oil to Make Fuel

By Governor Brian Schweitzer
Center for American Progress

Thursday 03 November 2005

Many things can be converted fuel, including crops, natural gas, waste, manure, and many other carbon-based substances. In Montana, we are encouraging the production of these kinds of alternative fuels in an effort to catalyze the energy future.

One of these alternatives is gasoline, though not the gasoline we all know. This gasoline comes from coal.

Though it sounds like alchemy, the means to turn coal into synthetic petroleum products such as gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel has been around since 1913 and was used in America as early as 1928. Germany used "synfuel" to power most of its vehicles in World War II, and South Africa used the technology to overcome apartheid sanctions starting in the 1950s.