Yes, FT process, and variants of it, work. They however also use considerably more energy than the biological method to propel the reaction. They tend to work better with homogeneous feedstocks, and coal is the obvious one.
This leads me to speculate that the LS9 process - which is biologically driven, is essentially the FT process moved down to the level of enzymes inside microbes and operating at normal temperatures and pressures, as biological chemistry tends to do. And this leads me to speculate that the obvious logical evolution of the LS9 approach is to move to coal as the feedstock. If they can get there!
(one also is inclined to speculate on the notion of insitu coal liquefaction by a variant of LS9, and what might happen if these engineered life-forms became ubiquitous in the environment.)
If so, peak oil (which is really a plateau), in the overarching sense may last not about 10 years, but perhaps 30 years - something like that. It's often said that the coal will last 2 or 3 hundred years - but that's not true if you examine the usage in term of the derivative rates of change, ie increasing rates. Looked at honestly the coal can't last more than a few decades at most.
And that leads to some realistic hope that we'll have a chance to dodge the bullet, in the sense that western 'Tao" may have time to evolve into a stable and solar-powered social structure. The evolution of the LS9 biotech seems to be to move toward the microbes being fueled by solar input - a symbiosis of plant and animal microbes, hydrogen+carbon+photons in and oil out.
Meantime one wonders - if the LS9 methods are so great won't the microbes be stolen or nationalized or duplicated - or all three? And if so is there somewhere in the future of our listeroid centered universe a possibility that we'll have clandestine bio-synthesis brew-labs using illegal (they'll surely pass some law!) bugs to make fuel that bypasses the taxman and the corporate greed-collectors? Makes a Si Fi story line!