Ignorant, you have really hit upon the difficulty I ran smack into when trying to have an intelligent discussion with Wyoming's newest(appointed senator, John Barrasso who claimed Wyoming had enough coal for 500 years!. But I digress. The US EIA has info on the different reserves of coal. The link is
http://www.eia.doe.gov/fuelcoal.html. This will get you started. I have an interest in Wyoming coal because Wyoming is my home.For example Sen Barrasso said 500 years.The Wyoming state geologist Lance Cook has stated Wyoming has 38 years. The US EIA says something on the order of 270,000 million tons(I think that would be 270 billion short tons) of recoverable reserves of all types but does not break it down into the various subtypes of recoverable reserves. Looking at reserves logically requires looking at the net energy equation. After all, some reserves are more recoverable than others. Using cheap diesel to recover cheaper coal is one reserve. Using expensive diesel gives you another figure.
I have figures of US production(2006) of 1161 billion tons. The western states produced 619.4 million tons and my home state of Wyoming was 446 million tons.Coal produced 52% of US electricity making Wyoming responsible for 38% , a staggering number for one state. Our senators(Barrasso and Enzi) and single representative(Cubin) are in the pockets of the resource companies and want to dig up the whole state. They are clueless about carbon emmisions, Hg and sulphur pollution, renewable alternatives etc. All they know is that they get huge contributions from the industry.They and their ilk are obstacles to a better world. So what else is new?