Pros:
1)Finds a productive use for waste(hopefully garbage dumps can eventually be reclaimed)
2)Eliminates dependence on foreign oil(no more money flowing to sponsors of terrorism)
3)Municipalities can produce their own oil rather than being at the whims of oil companies
4)If universally adopted eliminates the net production of greenhouse gases, one of the reasons against using fossil fuels
5)Produces other valuable byproducts besides oil
6)Has potential to reprocess many hard to deal with toxic wastes
7)Will save remote areas like ANWR from being destroyed by oil drillers
Cons:
1)Since oil is no longer a non-renewable resource, and can be manufactured cheaply, there may be fewer efforts to make zero emission vehicles, or even more efficient ones
2)Process needs to prove itself commercially
3)There may be political opposition by the powers-that-be who wish to keep the oil companies in power
As you can see, I think there are more good than bad things about this. My main concern is that since the greenhouse effect will no longer be an issue if we stop mining oil and coal then we will slacken in our efforts(albeit feeble thus far) to reduce use of oil as a power source. In my opinion the environmentalists made a huge mistake by choosing the greenhouse effect as the poster child for their conservation efforts. The world's scientists are still in disagreement as to whether or not the effect exists, or is merely an outlier of normal climate patterns, even though I personally think it's for real. Rather, they should have focused on the proven negative effects of burning oil-cancer, asthma, acid rain, toxic runoff from roads, smog, generally filthy smelling air around roads and in large cities. These are all real, and are all good reasons to stop burning oil yesterday. The oil from this process needn't be burned to provide power anyway. Rather, it can be fed to a fuel cell as a source of hydrogen, and produce electricity as a byproduct. Perhaps this would be the best use of this process. Process the waste, and generate electricity on site via fuel cells. The electricity can be sold to the municipality for more money than the oil is worth, and the waste products from the fuel cells can be fed back into the "reactor". This electricity can be used to replace the electricity currently produced by coal burning plants. Since the fuel is free, I can see electricity becoming very cheap, and electric cars charged from the power grid(or perhaps simply using inductive pickups to get electricity from cables buried in the road) replacing oil burners. Of course, you can also use the oil produced to feed fuel-cell powered cars as well. As I said earlier, I just hope we continue development of zero emission vehicles(both cars and planes) even if this process comes into widespread use. Growing medical costs are becoming one of the single biggest issues nowadays, and I suspect fossil fuel use is one cause of such a huge number of generally unhealthy and depressed people. How could you not be depressed always breathing filthy air? BTW, the term "fossil fuel" will become something of an anacronyism should this idea become successful.
