Why Oil Shale and not Coal?

Why Oil Shale and not Coal? I have a hard time understanding why our Utah Federal Elected Officials seem hell bent on extracting Oil from Oil Shale (rock), when we could be generating liquid fuel directly from coal right now. The United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal. We have 300-500 years of known reserves and the technology for converting coal directly to liquid fuel has been known since the Germans developed the technology 60 years ago. If the United states were to go on a war footing crash program and shift all diesel and jet fuel for truckers, transportation and airlines etc and fix the price for the next 10 years so that these folks would have a known energy price, just watch the price of OIL and gasoline drop like a rock. All it would take would be an executive order from the President and a directive to the Military and the department of Energy.