A Western Australian gold company and Australia’s top research body are joining forces to trial a new coal mining technique in southern Queensland.
Metex and the CSIRO will burn coal deposits underground at three locations in the Surat Basin, west of Brisbane, and extract the gas for power generation and to produce liquid fuels like diesel.

China plans to promote the development of dimethyl ether (DME), a fuel created from coal, which is being touted as a cleaner substitute for diesel, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Standards for the use of DME as a civil fuel were bing being drawn up, the report quoted a circular from the energy policy-making National [...]

Hillsborough Resources Ltd. and a subsidiary of Anglo American PLC - to form a new metallurgical coal company in British Columbia.
Tuesday’s announcement came one day after Western Canadian Coal Corp. (TSX:WTN) terminated a planned takeover of NEMI to gain control over the Belcourt and Saxon coal prospects in northeastern British Columbia.
Hillsborough (TSX:HLB) announced Tuesday that [...]

Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s second-biggest oil company, and Shenhua Ningxia Coal Industry Group agreed to study investing as much as $6bn in a China plant to turn coal into fuels and chemicals.
Shell and Shenhua Ningxia, a unit of Shenhua Group Corp, China’s biggest coal producer, will study the technical and commercial viability of building [...]

The federal government, the University of Wyoming and the energy industry should immediately join forces in a pilot project to demonstrate that the state’s coal reserves can be converted into such products as diesel fuel and clean-burning gas to fuel power plants, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Dale Groutage said Monday.
Groutage, unopposed for his party’s nomination [...]

Coal producer Foundation Coal Holdings Inc. said Monday a subsidiary completed its refinancing of a senior secured credit facility.
The new $835 million facility has better pricing and flexibility than the $685 million facility it’s replacing, the company said. The new facility will mean about $4 million in annual pre-tax benefits, the company said.

Xstrata Plc, the world’s biggest exporter of coal used in power plants, said it agreed with most of its Japanese customers on a price for thermal coal sold under contract in 2006-07 that is near last year’s record level.
Xstrata, based in Zug, Switzerland, agreed with Japanese power utilities on a price of $52.50 per metric [...]

The Environmental Protection Agency is researching a new coal technology that will partially burn coal to generate gas.
Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) can lower air emissions and water use, as well as produce less solid waste. An EPA report also found that this technology could provide a more cost effective approach to capture carbon dioxide, [...]

LABOR said today it would support any government offer of cheap coal for North Korea to get the rogue state back into peace talks and put an end to the missile crisis..
The Australian newspaper reported today that Australia is prepared to offer North Korea a cheap secure energy deal, probably coal shipments, in a bid [...]

The government is expected this week to open the way to new nuclear power stations when it spells out how it will keep the lights burning at the same time as trying to meet its international obligations to tackle global warming.
But while backing big power in the shape of nuclear and so-called clean coal, the [...]