There sure seems to be a flood of “miracle engery” stories lately.
This is no “miracle” story like the pie-in-the-sky solar panel and wind technologies. Converting coal and bitumen to oil is already close to being competitive with pumped oil. It doesn’t take much of an advancement in technology to make it economically feasible.
Whatever the current big problem, there are always "miracle" technological that promise much only fizzle away for some technical reason unmentioned in the press release. But a few really do deliver.
I can't tell from articles like this which category this solution is in...if I could I would become a venture capitalist.