Scientists at the company LS9 are nearing completion on a project they call "renewable petroleum," which may turn out to be the answer to the Earth's depleting oil supply and our dependence on the oil fields of the Middle East.

LS9 was founded by George Church, a geneticist from Harvard Medical School and Chris Somerville, a plant biologist from Stanford University. Apparently if you put a geneticist and a plant biologist together you get oil-making bacteria. LS9 has developed a way for bacteria, plants and animals to make petroleum.

How does this work? Organisms make fatty acids to store energy. By modifying certain genetic pathways, scientists can take the acid away from the fatty and what you get is fatty oil. More specifically, a hydrocarbon that can be made into fuel.

One of the advantages of LS9's new process is that their product is purely oil, not ethanol, which studies show do not contain as much energy as gas and also may be more dangerous to the public at large.

LS9 claims to be able to make hundreds of different hydrocarbons using bacteria. An advantage to this is that harvesting the oil doesn't involve the contaminating sulfur they get from underground crude oil. LS9 hopes to have the oil out within three to five years.