Will Big Oil Become Big Algae? ExxonMobil and Chevron Invest in Synthetic Biology

ExxonMobil entered into a $600 million venture with Synthetic Genomics, a firm founded by biotech pioneer Dr. Craig Venter, who has engineered strains of algae that secrete oil from their cells. Will oil companies transform themselves into algae companies? Or, a few years from now, could the makers of “Who Killed the Electric Car?” film a sequel about algae?