Underground coal gasification

Professional Engineering, the magazine from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, has just produced an excellent report on underground coal gasification (they also ran a great one on Carbon Capture and Storage).

Underground coal gasification injects water and oxygen into deep, unmineable, coal seems where the coal is part burnt to form carbon mon-oxide, hydrogen and methane. This mix is pumped to the surface where it is possible to clean up, (I think the carbon monoxide is reacted with more water to produce more hydrogen and carbon dioxide) and separate the gas. The carbon di-oxide goes back underground to safe long-term storage, whilst the hydrogen goes either to be burnt in a turbine, or to fuel the hydrogen economy.

Now you might think that the UK is running out of coal - well sort of. We might be getting towards the end of the easily extractable stuff, where you can get a man to.
Of course you can always drill to these other places - such as under the north sea, and perform underground coal gasification there.
This gives us another 300 years of hydrogen production.

Further this isn't a new technology - it's been around for years (I know that the Soviets spent a lot of time working on it, and that a recent (small) project in South Africa went quite well).

Will it happen? PE has a great quote "Partly to blame is the dirty, unfashionable, image of coal, which as seen energy firms and governments opt for gas and, increasingly, nuclear power stations."