Officials visit clean CTL plant

STAFF WRITER

Pike County officials say they made a trip to North Dakota last week to prove it's possible to turn coal into liquid fuel in a clean manner, but are still reluctant to say how close the county is to landing such a facility.

Coordinating a media conference call yesterday, County Judge-Executive Wayne T. Rutherford and Energy Technology Director Roger Ford announced they visited the Dakota Gasification Company's Great Plains Synfuels Plant near Buelah, N.D., on Friday. Calling editorials in major newspapers wrong for saying there is no way to have clean coal-to-liquids (CTL) plants, Rutherford said his visit to the one of 44 gasification plants started in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s - in response to the country's first effort at energy independence - proved to him it is possible.

“In terms of our project,” Ford said, “it (the trip) proves that this (carbon sequestration) can be done on a commercial scale.”

There were plants started in Pike County - in the area where Shelby Valley High School now sits - and in Ashland, but when the price of oil dropped, funding was cut for all except the one in North Dakota, which has been processing synthesized natural gas since 1984.

The Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Production Act, cosponsored by Kentucky's R-Jim Bunning, calls for authorizing the Department of Defense to purchase CTL fuels and integrate them into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for military use. The act has been read twice and is currently in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, according to the Library of Congress. The CTL Coalition says this will discourage oil exporting countries from manipulating imported oil prices solely to block U.S. development of CTL plants, averting the funding drop in the early ‘80s

The North Dakota plant started testing the process of capturing CO2 in the late ‘90s and started transporting the greenhouse gas via a 200-mile pipeline to the Weyburn Oil Field in Saskatchewan, Canada, the U.S. Department of Energy Reported. The oil company uses the gas to recover more oil from its wells. Prior to carbon capture, the North Dakota plant released the carbon into the air, a process which the Environmental Public Protection Cabinet monitors as it is thought to contributes to global warming.

A CTL plant goes one step further than a gasification plant, Ford said, as once the coal is pressurized to release the natural gas, a CTL plant then uses a catalyst to convert the gas to liquid - which requires water, oxygen and a heat source.

Pike County wouldn't need miles of pipeline to transport its CO2, as it could sell it to those who own the 6,000 gas wells and numerous oil wells in Pike County, Rutherford said.

Pike County, which is already researching the feasibility of and focusing on a site for a CTL plant and an Alternative Energy Park, says it is looking at three sites, Rutherford said, asserting the county is partnering with several companies including Oakridge National Laboratories and Sasol, which runs CTL plants in Africa, and a company interested in opening a plant in Pike. However, he would not comment if it was one of the companies listed in Gov. Ernie Fletcher's letter supporting an urgent need for energy legislation - Rentech, Inc., TECO Coal Corporation, Peabody Energy and EnviRes LC - which Fletcher used to rationalize a special session.

Rentech is working with Mingo County Redevelopment Authority for a CTL plant officials say will be near Gilbert, W.Va., and plans to capture the carbon and turn it into glass pellets, as previously reported.

Peabody announced earlier this month it may be partnering with ConocoPhillips in a project to convert coal to synthetic natural gas in western Kentucky, and TECO has mines in Pike County.

The county may have a study done by next spring or summer, Ford said, asserting the county could talk more about a specific site and company then.

Whether the plant would be a CTL or gasification depends on how the legislation ends up, Ford said, calling it “crucial” to Pike's decision on which way to go.