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Thanks for the excellent summary. One of the big issues in China's clamping down on the proliferation of CTL projects is the intense water requirement. According to China's own figures, 11 tonnes of water are required for the production of 1 tonne of CTL liquids. In contrast, 71% of China's coal reserves are in 4 provinces with only 2% of China's water reserves, and North China is already considered to be "physically scarce" in terms of water. Is water an issue with the proposed Australian plants?
Thanks for noting the water issue - I hadn't considered that aspect.
I couldn't find anything about water shortages and dying cattle in Mongolia after a few minutes in Google, but I did come up with this post at Biopact, which touches on the subject and refers to an intersting study at Carnegie mellon University :
http://biopact.com/2007/06/china-considers-discontinuing-coal-to.html
http://wpweb2.tepper.cmu.edu/ceic/papers/ceic-07-04.asp
Water is always an issue in Australia - not so much with the Monash plant - but very much so with the unlikely plant proposed in northern South Australia. I'm not sure about Chinchilla, but I'd imagine getting hold of large quantities of water would be competitive - though I think the economics of CTL would be more compelling than growing rice (for example) when bidding for water rights.