Worldwide wellhead natural gas prices have been so low, for so long, that it really hasn't been that profitable or necessary to gasify coal. There are some new techniques that are apparently bringing down the cost of coal gasification, using cleaner higher heat content coal.... And, the Japanese aren't really too keen about conventional water cooled nuke plant right now....

This is good news for Montana RR's. Although, as the article noted, this new customer will probably just replace coal volume lost due to shrinking long term domestic demand, for a "zero sum" game, when it comes to net "new" coal jobs.

I am a bit surprised we aren't seeing more coal demand for low sulfur higher btu US export coal for China. But, it seems that energy efficient technologies, and a lot of new big hydro, a lot of wind, and even solar are meeting more Chinese power needs. And, China is reportedly continuing to shut down older, dirty and inefficient, Mao era, Soviet designed coal fired power plants, and have even cancelled some planned new coal fired power plants.

US coal exports to eastern Europe have been an interesting development, though.