1) "
Most of thecoal on the east coast is at 250m or more" - This is the difference.
The coal in
existing coal mines already has access to the coal, camps on site, equipment in place etc. HXG are talking about accessing coal in the Pedirka Basin where coal is 500-2000m below surface.
Exactly what is the advantage of removing 500m-700m of overburden to get to coal, or block caving or underground or anything else, instead of just buying it from an existing coal mine?
2)
"A potential gasification partner would build own and operate the plant so would be responsible for funding all of that component of the project. HXG would pay them a tolling fee to compensate them for effectively converting coal (and steam) to hydrogen"What big smart company is going to build a billion dollar gasification and ccus plant underwritten by an offtake with a micro cap company with no assets. How would they ever get that past their Board of Directors? 3)
"The steam reformationdoes not result in zero co2, what it does do is produce a “capture ready” co2that can be sequestered"Companies can capture the co2, but it is Never neutral. .
Best practice coal gasification with CCUS produces 3.5 tonnes of co2 for every tonne of Hydrogen AFTER CCUS. That is if there are no issues. 
And don't forget that it costs to sequester the Carbon. From Airproducts research it costs $76 usd a tonne or approx $100AUD a tonne of CO2. There is 19 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of Hydrogen from coal so that is
$1900 aud a tonne in the cost just to get rid of the co2 by product. Add in the cost to get the coal from 500m underground to surface, build camps, get electricity there, transport the Hydrogen, get environmental approvals, mine approvals, etc.
The market rate will be somewhere between $1.5- $2 usd a kg. So even if they can capture the CO2, they will be producing blue Hydrogen with a large co2 footprint, and at a cost above what it can sell it for.
