ABSTRACT
The English made substantial progress during the 1930s in the development of synthetic liquid fuels from coal. The French were active in the development of synthetic liquid fuels from coal. As early as 1922, experiments by E. A. Prudhonune produced water gas from lignite; the gas was then passed over a nickel-cobalt catalyst to produce small quantities of gasoline. The sudden critical importance of petroleum, and its clear link to military victory, produced the two separate wartime events which would lead directly to the Louisiana, Missouri Synthetic Fuel Project of 1949. Experimental work on synthetic fuel continued sporadically at some of the small research outposts of the embryonic Federal Bureau of Mines. The Bureau of Mines had never implied that the production of synthetic liquid fuels was competitive with natural petroleum. After the end of the Louisiana, Missouri Synthetic Liquid Fuels Demonstration Plants, the oil industry grew more and more dependent on inexpensive petroleum from the Middle East and Venezuela.
