A 250 mile long coal seam discovered deep in the interior desert of Australia's Northern Territory appears to be the most gigantic coal deposit on planet Earth, and Central Petroleum Limited wants to burn it all. They project it will take them at least a century to go through the entire reserve, or right about until they’ve turned Australia’s notoriously harsh desert into an incomprehensibly lifeless hellscape populated by miners in climate controlled space-suits.
Their approach is somewhat unconventional: Central Petroleum wants to liquefy the coal underground, turn it into a gas, and then transform that gas back into a liquid, to be used like conventional oil. They project the field could produce 1 billion barrels a year, thus totally solving peak oil
FOREVER for about ten minues.
The entire process is just as energy intensive as it sounds, but the company says it's all good, because they also plan to capture the carbon produced by the process and sequester it underground. So, you know, it’ll be a massive underground coal plant, but it’ll be a massive underground CLEAN coal plant!
The only thing standing between the company and construction of the project is its projected cost, $7.5 billion. No prob, Bob: the company reports it has interest from more than 100 partners.