By Clinton E. Crackel, Co-Founder and Co-Chairman, Nuclear Fuels Reprocessing Coalition

Clinton Crackel

January 26, 2022 - Although the price of coal has risen to about $145 per short ton, and is predicted to rise even further, it is still possible for coal to compete with petroleum in a cost-effective way. The increasing cost is due to several factors including the COVID pandemic, drastic changes in weather conditions in other coal producing countries such as China and India, restricting their ability to mine coal, and reducing the demand for coal in this country by shutting down more coal-fired power plants to further promote our national green energy goals. 

Although the current price of WTI crude is about $85 per barrel, and Brent crude is about $88 per barrel, many energy market analysts fear petroleum pries will rise to over $150 per barrel because of the increasing uncertainty over a Russian military invasion of Ukraine.

Based on thermal equivalency, one ton of bituminous coal is equal to 4.52 barrels of crude oil. Bituminous coal is preferred over lignite in power plants because of its higher thermal quality and reduced atmospheric emissions.

Lignite is the most preferential of the three types of coal for use in the liquefaction process to produce fuel, synthetic gas, and other products. It also has the highest water content. Yet it takes three times the amount of lignite to achieve the same energy value as bituminous coal, and bituminous coal can still be liquified.

I doubt President Biden limited our national fossil fuel output for environmental purposes. He implemented these prohibitions to benefit the financial goals of various global energy consortiums, including Chinese and Russian companies, and to help destabilize our national economy. Our economic destabilization is a critical component of a progressive, globalist effort to eliminate national borders, and to reduce the United States to a third world, industrially non-competitive status. 

Unlike British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s willingness to forfeit Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany to achieve peace and save lives, I predict President Biden will forfeit Ukraine because of our increasing dependence on Russian oil, regardless of the number of lives lost.

During his numerous years of faithful, political self-service, President Biden has learned the political art of convincing his constituents of his loyalty, devotion, and patriotism, while simultaneously denying any actual wrongdoing in a most convincing manner. He understands the need to pick leftist subordinates to achieve the goal of the American Marxists to transform our constitutional republic into a federal socialist republic. Also, I believe he intends to strengthen our economic and political ties with Communist China. 

As for the COVID pandemic, I am not convinced in the least the pandemic was purely accidental. I suspect it was deliberately planned and implemented to accomplish a multitude of goals, including influencing the outcome of the 2020 general election; increasing the profitability of big pharmaceutical companies, other global corporations, and possibly even the drug cartels; enabling Communist China to increase its competitive edge over other industrialized nations; and to undermine our national education system and small, privately-owned businesses.

Although President Biden boasts his administration has been able to create six million new jobs, in actuality, because of the COVID public subsistence funding that has enticed many not to return to work, six million job openings were created. Don’t worry though, the labor force needed to fill those openings is still streaming across our southern border and has been doing so since Biden took office. Plus, they will likely work for reduced wages and no benefits.

Should the United States retain its position as the greatest industrialized nation in the world after the 2022 general election, and return to a state of energy self-sufficiency, I suggest the coal liquefaction process be revisited. 

However, the time has come to address the need to implement emissions collection, diversion and conversion technology to make coal competitive with some green energy sources. Perhaps such technology can be promoted though a public/private enterprise committed to preserving the use of coal because of its status as a valuable natural resource capable of producing a multitude of industrial, agricultural, and household products.