Trading coal for oil may prove profitable

Say oil goes back to $80 to $100 per barrel, and coal stays on its steady course of $12 to $15 per ton. Under this price scenario, you might be able to burn coal to generate the thousands of megawatts required to extract “oilshale” under a freeze-wall and heating regime, even if the energy value of the oil you extract doesn’t match the energy you put into the program.

Would it be possible, then, to have a total net loss of energy and still make a profit because you leveraged $90 oil against $12 coal?

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