I was walking around the Pennsylvania Farm Show looking for new green inventions and i stumbled across an old wagon that said "Coal Oil". Living in a state where coal is plentiful and oil is getting more expensive, it made me pause.

Coal Oil has been around since the 1850's. Coal was distilled with other materials and a liquid fuel was derived. The Third Reich made 600,000 barrels a day of petrol and aviation gas during WWII.

The technology was improved greatly in South Africa in the apartheid years to reduce dependence on imported oil. Today there are three CTL plants in what is now democratic South Africa, converting coal into 150,000 barrels a day (equal to the output of a medium-sized oilfield). In addition to petrol, diesel and avgas, the process produces a wide range of by-products such as petrochemicals, waxes, feedstocks for plastics manufacture, and fuel gas. moneyweek.com

the United States has about 265 billion tons of coal reserves. If we continue to use coal at the same rate as we do today, we will have enough coal to last 285 years. This vast amount of coal makes the United States the world leader in known coal reserves lsa.colorado.edu

However, generation of coal to liquid fuel in it's current level of technology generates massive amounts of green house gasses and other pollutants, plus coal accounts for a large portion of electricity generation and raising the demand for coal by the production of liquid fuel would trickle into electrical generation rates.