Conoco-Phillips is helping fund University research into converting coal into ethanol, according to two posts conveniently pulled together on Doug Williams' blog No 1203: Biofuels, ethanol, biodiesel, clean energy.
Lousiana Sate University, will be carrying out the work to improve the efficiency of ethanol fuel.
There is an awful lot of coal under the US, and if you're more concerned with fuel security rather than the energetic cost of producing fuel then it may be a good place to start looking. It is interesting that they are looking to make ethanol from syngas, when with a bit of fiddling you could make hydrocarbons... ConocoPhilllips has the infrastructure in place to handle those.