Possibilities of producing a synthetic liquid fuel comparable to natural petroleum.

 Yes. If by “comparable to natural petroleum” you mean a liquid hydrocarbon mixture that can be refined into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, lubricants, and petrochemical feedstocks, there are several credible routes. The key distinction is that you don't need to reproduce geological petroleum molecule-for-molecule; you can synthesize a tailored mixture that behaves similarly in existing refinery infrastructure.

Main possibilities

Route Feedstock What you can make Maturity

Fischer–Tropsch (FT) H₂ + CO/syngas Synthetic crude, diesel, jet fuel, waxes Commercial

Methanol-to-hydrocarbons (MtH) H₂ + CO₂ → methanol Gasoline-range hydrocarbons, olefins Commercial/pilot

Biomass → syngas → FT Agricultural/forest residues Synthetic diesel/jet/crude Demonstrated

CO₂ + green H₂ → hydrocarbons Captured CO₂ + renewable H₂ E-fuels, synthetic crude components Demonstration/early commercial

Algae/biomass → bio-oil → upgrading Lipids/biomass Renewable diesel, jet fuel, refinery feedstock Commercial to emerging

Plastic waste → pyrolysis oil → upgrading Waste plastics Oil-like refinery feedstock Commercial/emerging

Coal/natural gas → FT Fossil carbon Synthetic petroleum Commercial, but carbon-intensive

1. Fischer–Tropsch synthetic crude

This is probably the closest established technology to what you're imagining.

First, carbon monoxide and hydrogen are produced as syngas. A catalyst then converts the syngas into long-chain hydrocarbons:

CO + H₂ → hydrocarbons + H₂O

The resulting material can contain waxes and hydrocarbons spanning roughly the gasoline through heavy-oil range. Hydrocracking and other refinery operations can turn those products into diesel, jet fuel, naphtha, lubricants, etc.

Historically, FT has been used on a large scale with coal and natural gas as the carbon source. The same chemistry can instead start with biomass or captured CO₂, potentially producing a much lower-carbon fuel.

2. Making petroleum from CO₂ and hydrogen

This is particularly interesting for a future carbon-recycling petroleum substitute.

Conceptually:

Renewable electricity → H₂

Captured CO₂ + H₂ → CO/syngas or methanol

Syngas/methanol → hydrocarbons

Hydrocarbons → synthetic crude → conventional refinery products

The carbon in the fuel would therefore come from atmospheric or industrial CO₂ rather than from underground petroleum. When the fuel is burned, that carbon returns to the atmosphere, creating a potentially near-circular carbon system—provided the hydrogen and CO₂ capture are supplied with sufficiently low-carbon energy.

The major limitation isn't the chemistry; it's energy and economics. Converting electricity → hydrogen → hydrocarbons → combustion releases substantially less usable energy than simply using the electricity directly.

3. Methanol as an intermediate

Another powerful approach is

CO₂ + H₂ → methanol → hydrocarbons

Methanol can be transformed catalytically into mixtures containing gasoline-range hydrocarbons and chemical feedstocks. Related processes can produce olefins, which can subsequently be converted into larger hydrocarbon molecules.

This gives you considerable control over the final product. Instead of trying to make “synthetic petroleum” as one enormous chemical mixture, you can make the particular molecular families needed by the downstream refinery.

4. Biomass-derived synthetic petroleum

Plant material is another source of renewable carbon.

A generalized route is:

Biomass → gasification → syngas → FT → synthetic hydrocarbons

Agricultural residues, forestry residues and other wastes are especially interesting because they avoid dedicating large areas of farmland to fuel production.

Another route is fast pyrolysis, which thermally converts biomass into a liquid bio-oil. That oil isn't automatically equivalent to petroleum: it generally contains considerably more oxygen and is chemically unstable compared with conventional crude. But catalytic upgrading and hydrogen treatment can turn it into much more petroleum-like refinery feedstock.

Could you make something almost indistinguishable from crude oil?

Chemically, yes.

Petroleum isn't a single substance. It is an extraordinarily complicated mixture of hydrocarbons, including paraffins, cycloalkanes, aromatics and numerous minor compounds containing sulfur, nitrogen, oxygen and metals.

A synthetic process can deliberately produce a mixture with a selected distribution of hydrocarbon molecules. In fact, synthetic fuels can be cleaner and more uniform than ordinary crude.

There is an important trade-off, though: a synthetic fuel designed to be a perfect substitute for crude isn't necessarily the optimal product. It may be more efficient to synthesize finished diesel, jet fuel or gasoline directly, avoiding the energy-intensive steps required to create an artificial “crude” that subsequently has to be refined.

The really interesting possibility: an artificial petroleum ecosystem

A mature synthetic-petroleum industry could look something like this:

Renewable electricity

↓

Electrolysis

↓

Green hydrogen

↓

CO₂ capture ─────────┐

↓ │

Syngas / methanol ←────┘

↓

Hydrocarbon synthesis

↓

Synthetic crude / tailored hydrocarbon streams

↓

Refinery

↓

Gasoline · diesel · jet fuel · lubricants · petrochemicals

That would effectively replace the geological function of petroleum with an industrial carbon-and-energy cycle.

The biggest obstacles are therefore not “can chemistry make hydrocarbons?”—it clearly can. The difficult questions are where the energy comes from, where the carbon comes from, how much conversion efficiency is lost, catalyst lifetime, hydrogen requirements, and cost.

If the goal is specifically a petroleum replacement at civilization scale, the most promising architecture is probably not one giant process that imitates crude oil. It is a combination of CO₂ capture + low-carbon hydrogen + FT/methanol chemistry + conventional refining, with biomass and waste carbon used where they provide economic advantages.