From more than half a century ago, as follow up on their earlier work which we have already documented, we see that Standard Oil improved even further, as confirmed by our own United States Government, via it's Patent Office, the technologies they already had in hand whereby Carbon Dioxide can be reacted with Methane to generate a synthesis gas, or "syngas", from which liquid fuels can, through long-known catalytic reactions, be manufactured.
As we must reiterate: Standard Oil would have known, as should have the Federal Government, by the time this patent was issued, in 1954, that Methane, as confirmed by the Nobel Committee in 1912, could itself be synthesized, via the Sabatier process, from Carbon Dioxide.
Moreover, they would also have known that Methane can, in processes such as fully disclosed in Texaco's 1950 United States Patent, Number 2,516,974, for "Gasifying Carbonaceous Material", which we are documenting via separate dispatch, that the raw materials for Methane synthesis can be produced by reacting together hot Coal and Steam, with little or no co-production of Carbon Dioxide.
Additional comment follows brief excerpts from:
"United States Patent 2,676,156 - Preparation of Synthesis Gas
April, 1954
Inventor: Bradford Bailey, NJ
Assignee: Standard Oil Development Company, DE
Abstract: The present invention relates to the preparation of a gas comprising carbon monoxide and hydrogen.
In accordance with the present invention, carbon dioxide, steam and a light hydrocarbon gas such as methane (are reacted) to produce carbon monoxide and hydrogen in proportions suitable for employment in the hydrocarbon synthesis process.
By manipulation of the quantities of CH4, H2O and CO2 to be reacted, desired ratios of H2 to CO in the product may be obtained."
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Implications of that last excerpted statement are, upon reflection, portentous.
In essence, we can manufacture synthesis gas variably suitable in composition for catalytic condensation into a selection of different liquid hydrocarbons, by simply adjusting the ratios of Methane, Steam and Carbon Dioxide in the feed mixture.
And, again: We can make Methane from either Carbon Dioxide or Coal.
We should all, seriously, reflect upon those implications, in addition to what is implied by the fact that we have, in the US, officially, known all of that to be true for, as herein, more than one half of a century.