United States Patent: 4399234

Over the course of the past few years, we've made numerous reports documenting the rather extensive technology, directed toward the conversion of Coal into petroleum product substitutes, such as Gasoline and Diesel fuel, that had been steadily developed over the course of multiple decades by Pittsburgh, PA's own Gulf Oil Corporation.

An early example would include:

Pittsburgh Gulf Oil 1953 CoalTL | Research & Development; concerning: "US Patent 2,654,675 - Process for Preparing Liquid Hydrocarbons from Coal; 1953; Assignee: Gulf Research and Development Company, Pittsburgh; This invention involves an improved combination of steps for preparing liquid hydrocarbon fuels from coal".

Getting the 'Appalachian Gold Rush' Right - News, Sports, Jobs - The Intelligencer / Wheeling News-Register

Now, we don't really want to be seen as taking a poop in the Easter basket of a guy, who, in essence, signs one of the pension checks that's rather desperately needed by our impoverished little enclave each month, but: it seems as if even the esteemed and honorable CEO of Bayer Corporation, Greg Babe, may God bless his beneficent soul, like many of our Coal Country's ink-stained wretches, has been overcome by the vapors wafting up out of the Marcellus Shale.

Since our above-mentioned Bayer pensioner also happens to be a former, highly-trained Coal Mine Fire & Rescue Team member, he feels it to be our bounden duty to try to get Mr. Babe out of the exhaust gas returns, and into a fresh air intake entry.

http://www.che.ncsu.edu/ILEET/CHE596web_Spr2010/resources/coal/Kirk-Othmer_Coal-Liquifaction.pdf

We have many times cited, and made reference to, the work of West Virginia University in the science and technology of Coal liquefaction and gasification; science and technology directed towards the manufacture of hydrocarbon liquid and gaseous replacements for anything we now derive from petroleum-based resources.

We have also noted and documented the cooperation between WVU and the official organization which has been established in China, to further advance China's ambitious plans for the development of an extensive industry based on such Coal conversion technology.

United States Patent: 7772447

The primary subjects of this dispatch are two, rather enormously complex, United States Patents issued just last year to scientists in the employ of our beloved oily behemoth, ExxonMobil.

The central object of both disclosed technologies, so closely related that we can't fathom the reason why two separate patents were issued, is the conversion of Methane into liquid hydrocarbons, primarily those that comprise the basic Gasoline blending stock often shorthanded as "BTX", i.e., Benzene, Toluene and Xylene.