Getting alkanes to react is not easy. I don't know how you'd do it. The method you use will determine whether you get an alcohol or some other product of oxidation like an acid or ketone.
If you figure out how to go from alkane to fatty acid, then esterizing it to glycerine (properly called glycerol) should be easy. However I'm not familiar with how it's done. Google searching is suggesting to me that enzymes are usually used, but I don't know much about it.
Here are some references on that topic:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v1 ... 056b0.html