Hmm, I'm not so cynical. The research has been done by Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. These guys are just down the road from Oxford University. The facility it one of the top research facilities in the UK. That gives these claims some weight.
Whilst the price is probably "back of envelope", I'm pretty sure the science is sound.
The principle might be sound, but I'm skeptical about the yield. Lots of chemical processes work at small scales but fail when they're implemented at full refinery/chemical plant scale. This is doubly true for nanotechnology.
They've demonstrated that the process works at small scales. Whether it'll scale sufficiently to work in a refinery is anyone's guess.
Whilst the price is probably "back of envelope", I'm pretty sure the science is sound.