Despite recent experience in petroleum markets, future oil prices and availability are still major uncertainties that can have significant impact on energy users. Natural gas prices have also seen continual escalation. In COMCO’s coal-based alternative fuel development work, we have taken a long-term outlook, namely that the only sensible fuel strategy for utility and industrial users continues to be the increased utilization of coal. Coal slurry fuels, such as coal-oil mixtures and coal-water mixtures, represent a way for energy users with existing conventional fuel-fired equipment to increase coal utilization without replacing those facilities with costly new coal-fired systems.

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