MINING DIESEL: Schweitzer Wants to Convert Otter Creek Coal into Liquid Fuel
*Posted on:Monday, 22 August 2005*
Montana acquired 533 million tons of federal coal near Ashland three years ago. A private company owns more than that interspersed checkerboard fashion among the state's holdings.
Both would like to develop that high quality coal.
And there are others, too, who have ideas for turning the coal into energy, revenue and profits.
†Because the price of oil is at unheard of levels, and the United States needs alternative energy supplies, Gov. Brian Schweitzer has targeted an old/new process to turn the coal into diesel and jet fuel. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., has put tax incentives for the process into the new energy and highway bills, and several US. energy technology firms have perfected the method.
The missing ingredient is investment capital - billions of dollars worth.
In a recent interview, Schweitzer said "there are a great number of believers, potential partners, who will put their money down."
The process is called Fischer-Tropsch, named for the German scientists who developed the process in the 1920s for converting coal to diesel fuel, which later ran the **** war machine. In more recent decades, the process was used in South Africa to fuel its vehicles when the world would not trade with the apartheid nation. It still produces 150,000 barrels of fuel a day from coal. Energy technology firms in the United States and elsewhere have fine-tuned F-T to make both its process and products pollution-free.
"There are no smoke stacks," Schweitzer said.
