South Africa's Sasol has formed a joint venture with Chevron after successfully exploiting coal-to-liquids technology and Syntroleum is planning to build a pilot gas-to-liquids plant in Australia. ExxonMobil has its own plans in this area while BP is looking at a similar testing venture at Nikiski in Alaska. Why all this activity now? After all, the ability to turn different kinds of fuel into liquid form has been around almost since the beginning of the last century.