We have a vast, untapped oil resource right here in the West that could produce more oil than the Middle East.

—Senator Oren Hatch, 2005

Synfuels are back. In 1985, President Ronald Reagan killed President Jimmy Carter’s Synthetic Fuels Corporation. Twenty years later, President Bush signed the “Oil Shale, Tar Sands, and Other Strategic Unconventional Fuels Act of 2005.” Unconventional fuels means “gas or oil from coal, shale and tar sands,” and that’s exactly how Time magazine defined synfuels in 1979.

The new push for synfuels is backed by the Departments of State, Defense and Energy, not to mention Big Oil and Big Coal. In October 2007, President Bush said:

We have a comprehensive strategy to deal with energy security and environmental quality at the same time.

His comprehensive strategy consists of non-corn ethanol, coal with carbon capture, nuclear power and efficiency standards for building. He also favors improved fuel economy standards. He did not mention synfuels. Synfuels, “unconventional fossil fuels,” are such a poor idea that Bush leaves them out of his “comprehensive strategy,” and his name does not appear with them even once on the same White House web page. ...