Ah, but there is such a thing as synthetic petrol – and even synthetic diesel. Sasol is just one of several operations running synthetic-fuel plants worldwide, making commercial quantities of fuel from coal or natural gas. The German military made a lot of synthetic diesel and aviation fuel during World War II when they couldn’t source any petroleum.

One advantage today is that “syndiesel” is totally free of the sulphur common in mineral petroleum. In fact, syndiesel is sometimes blended with conventional high-sulphur diesel so the resulting fuel meets current mandated ultra-low sulphur levels. (The sulphur contaminates catalytic converters.)

You might ask: why don’t we just make more synthetic petrol and diesel and tell OPEC to buzz off? The answer is that it’s expensive – although with the current price of crude hovering at more than $100 per barrel, the syns may become almost profitable after a costly reforming plant is built. There are some petroleum producers who are building synfuel plants, but they’re betting lots of money that the price of crude will stay at stratospheric levels.

Ultimately, the starting point – coal or methane – is also a non-renewable resource and contains plenty of carbon, some of which gets turned back into the atmosphere during processing as our old nemesis, carbon dioxide. One study I found suggests that the carbon output of a vehicle using synthetic fuel is nearly double that of a petroleum-based fuel.

The need for relatively small quantities of sulphur-free diesel makes those plants viable right now, but sulphur-free synthetic petrol isn’t necessary to meet emissions requirements. Add in the fact that syndiesel is easier and more efficient (read: cheaper) to make than its petrol equivalent, and there’s really no incentive to make significant commercial quantities of synthetic petrol – yet.