In a previous dispatch, posted August 16 of this year, we reported on: "US Patent 2,522, 468 - Production of Synthesis Gas; September, 1950; Assignee: Standard Oil Development Company, DE", wherein it was seen that, more than half a century ago, the US petroleum industry, as confirmed by our US Government technical experts, had devised a process for, as they put it: "continuously forming a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen ... suitably proportioned for use as a feed-gas in the synthesis of hydrocarbons ... which consists essentially (of reacting together) ... a mixture of methane, steam and carbon dioxide".
We note, again, that Standard Oil scientists would, by 1950, have been well-aware of the fact that the 1912 Nobel Prize was awarded to Paul Sabatier, for demonstrating that Methane could itself be synthesized from Carbon Dioxide.
And, they would also have known that Methane can, as well, be synthesized by the Steam-gasification of Coal, as was widely practiced, as we've documented, by numerous municipalities in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, to produce what was commonly known as "Town Gas".