Yes, the profit would be something like future price of coal * amount of coal recovered - cost of recovering the coal. What I don't understand is of these thre

Yes, the profit would be something like future price of coal * amount of coal recovered - cost of recovering the coal. What I don't understand is of these three variables, why you think the expected future price of coal is the one driving the decision. Because that is the only variable that has nothing to do with the mines being sold. But just think about this a little bit. You have Coal India, which publicly declared plans to ramp up production. That, too, is a statement on the future price of coal (since India imports much of its coal). So obviously Coal India thinks prices will be high enough to justify a ramp up of domestic production even though there is abundant coal available from nations with much more productive mines and higher quality coal. At the same time, Coal India is the one selling off these 60 mines (out of ~400). Why would they do that, if the mines weren't productive, or the cost of coal recovery high from them? In other words, you are drawing the exact opposite conclusion of what, IMO, should be drawn, and relying on this dubious oracle to predict future coal prices, when we have much better data with which to predict future coal prices.