The big coal reserves are in Wyoming with a moisture content of 35 percent. There is one facility in place that processes the moisture out (and thereby reduces freight costs)moving the BTU value from 8300 to 11,000 per pound. The coal is still coal, tho. The US still has vast quantities of oil shale which might be easier to process into hydrocarbons.
I read an article here, about a month or two ago, about tar sands in Canada. Apparently there are vast areas of this that are untapped. I visualize tar sands as being on the surface, like on a beach, but I could be mistaken. I know nothing about the technical aspects of refining this resource, but it appears that the mining and shipping part of the equation would be fairly straight-forward.
FReegards,