Making Waste Valuable

Interesting inventions that look like they have the potential to literally revolutionise waste management and energy production. I had doubts about the energy expended to the energy recouped ration but the fact that they're commercial processes suggests that it works. Here's what Treehugger says.
...imagine this: If this thing works, most toxic waste problems would disappear—and so would imported oil. According to its manufacturers, if the U.S. were to convert its agricultural waste alone into oil and gas, according to Discover magazine, it would yield the energy equivalent of 4 billion barrels of oil annually. Four billion barrels! That’s nearly as much as we import each year.
And yet this idea is not so much new, as it is simply sped up. The Earth already makes oil and gas from hydrocarbon-based waste, of course, it just takes a long time (like millions of years) for stuff to decompose and turn into petroleum, whereas TDP machines turbocharge the process by using and controlling heat and pressure to levels that break the feedstock's long molecular bonds.
And links in the article to further details
BoingBoing article
Vortex dehydration -"windhexe"
Oil from waste
Treehugger: Two Machines, One Concept: Making Waste Valuable