Coal’s future looks as sunny as a closed Kentucky mine at this point but at least it’s still got one. We just don’t know how much more crawl space and oxygen is left.

This post will ramble a bit in a bid to shed some light on the path ahead; there’s really no avoiding that in all this murk.

Start with #11 Best Buy Foresight Energy (NYSE: FELP), which is up 3.5% since joining the Aggressive Portfolio in October, enduring measured weakness alongside just about every other coal stock.

As noted in the original recommendation FELP is a risky speculation on the prospect of materially higher coal prices. It does own some of the lowest-cost thermal mines in the U.S., and reported $309 million in adjusted EBITDA on sales of $816 million during the coal industry’s worst year ever.

The more revealing cash flow statement looked less appealing, the $225 million in cash from operations including some one-time items offset by $149 million in annual interest costs.

The latter won’t moderate as much as I’d hoped following the pricey but essential debt restructuring the partnership has just executed. The $450 million offering of six-year second-lien notes priced at a nosebleed annual rate of 11.5%. The blended interest rate on FELP’s $1.4 billion total debt will be lower, but not by enough that anyone should ignore the mountainous risks perceived by the lenders. This does secure financing for at least the five-year term of the larger first-lien loan.

Distributions probably aren’t on the menu until sometime next year at the earliest, but management did at least signal optimism about “improved coal market conditions throughout 2017.”

Coal prices are in fact booming already – in China, where government-ordered output cuts have roughly doubled benchmark pricing over the last year. Australian and European coal is up about 50% from the historic lows of a year ago.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. prices have barely budged even as the inventory glut has greatly diminished because domestic demand remains restrained. And despite Foresight’s lip service to the Trump Administration’s backing for coal the industry continues to face a heavy slate of coal-fired power plant closings under pressure from state regulators.

The latest were announced earlier this week when Dayton Power & Light (DPL), a subsidiary of AES (NYSE: AES) announced plans to close two coal-fired plants in southern Ohio by the middle of next year. DPL was under pressure to negotiate a new rate structure with state regulators and environmental groups after an Ohio court invalidated a key charge. The agreement to close those plants, one of which received a notice of emission control violations only last month, was part of the price of continuing to do business.

Those plants were supplied by Murray Energy mines in West Virginia not affiliated with Foresight. But Foresight’s customer profile isn’t very different, and the steady shrinkage of coal generating capacity under regulatory pressure continues to hurt the entire coal mining industry.

The question is whether the 30% of U.S. power supply currently powered by coal can be economically replaced by natural gas given the growing demand from gas exporters and chemicals manufacturers. The bet here is that it can’t be without a significant spike in natural gas and coal prices for current levels over the next year or two. But I continue to see the coal names in the Aggressive Portfolio as its riskiest and shortest-term component.

FELP remains the #11 Best Buy below $9 and Contura (OTC: CNTE) checks in at #12 below $85. #3 Best Buy Consol Energy (NYSE: CNX) is well below its limit of $23 after a 21% pullback in two months; it remains a natural gas drilling play as much as a coal mining one. Alliance Holdings (NYSE: AHGP) and Alliance Resource Partners (NYSE: ARLP) are Holds after racking up total returns of around 40% since I recommended them nine months ago.