China’s escalating energy consumption places increasing stress on the world’s energy prices, leading to mounting global pressures to seek potential energy supplies through technology and exploration.

With oil prices hovering around $100 per barrel, coal is reemerging as a key raw material in the manufacture of the basic chemical materials used to make plastics, fertilizers, and hundreds of other products, according to an article scheduled for the March 17 issue of Chemical & Engineering News, ACS’ weekly news magazine.

Adding a little coal and processing the papermaking industry's black liquor waste into synthesis gas is a better choice than burning it for heat, improves the carbon footprint of coal-to-liquid processes, and can produce a fuel versatile enough to run a cooking stove or a truck, according to a team of Penn state engineers.

A variety of end products including jet fuel, gasoline, carbon anodes and heating oil may be possible using existing refineries and combinations of coal and refinery by-products, according to a team of Penn State researchers.

A 4-year study of mercury in crude oil refined in the United States has found that, of the two major sources of U.S. fossil energy mined coal and crude oil crude oil contains much less toxic mercury, on average, than coal. The study is scheduled for publication in the July 1 issue of ACS Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-monthly journal.

A methane gas explosion in a Siberian coal mine of Russia on Monday killed at least nine miners, a Russian emergency official said, the Associated Press reported March 19. At least two other miners were injured by the blast at the Ulyanovskaya mine in Siberia's Kemerovo region, Valery Korchagin, spokesman for the regional branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry, said by telephone.