$3 BILLION COAL-TO-LIQUIDS PLANT LOCATING IN MINGO

(12/13/2008)

A New York company wants to build a $3 billion coal-to-liquids plant in Mingo County, but has yet to come up with a firm plan to control the facility's carbon dioxide emissions. TransGas Development Systems LLC and Gov. Joe Manchin unveiled the project this week at a news conference at the governor's second annual West Virginia Energy Summit at the Stonewall Resort. Adam Victor, president of TransGas, said the plant would create 200 permanent jobs turning 8,500 tons of coal into 18,000 barrels of gasoline every day. The company hopes to be up and running by 2013 proposed to be built in Mingo County's new energy park near Gilbert. Victor announced the plant would be a "near-zero emissions facility," that would capture sulfur, mercury and other "regulated pollutants" before they go out a stack. TransGas says it will capture carbon dioxide emissions, but has no concrete plan for disposing of the gas. "Whatever the permitting process tells us to do is what we'll do," Victor said, while conceding that federal and state laws place no limits on carbon dioxide emissions to the air. The firm hopes to persuade the federal government to grant it a right of way to send carbon dioxide emissions through interstate pipelines to the Texas coast, where it could be pumped underground to help force out more oil and gas, and to be safely held. Environmentalists say that without carbon dioxide controls, such plants could emit twice the greenhouse emissions of gasoline, generating carbon dioxide both when coal is turned into liquid fuel and when that liquid fuel is burned.

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