Research & Development

Consol's top coal-to-gasoline executive retires

Charleston Daily Mail - Tuesday, January 27, 2009

CHARLESTON, W.Va.--The Consol Energy executive who headed the company's effort to build a coal-to-gasoline plant in Marshall County has retired but Consol's interest in the project "remains undiminished," said company spokesman Thomas Hoffman.

Paul Spurgeon retired effective last week. "It doesn't mean anything for the project," Hoffman said. "We are still interested in pursuing some sort of a conversion project in the Ohio Valley."

Consol's technology partner in the $800 million project, Synthesis Energy Systems Inc., dropped out in October. When Consol and SES announced the project in July, oil was trading at more than $100 a barrel. The price has declined dramatically since then. The economy also has slowed. When SES dropped out, it said it was doing so "due to the difficult financial environment."

Hoffman said on Monday, "You remember when we said that the SES partnership had been dissolved that we needed to find another technology partner. We are still discussing that with people. We're continuing to do evaluations and would very much like to develop an alternative market for our coal.

"With our economy being the way it is, I don't know that I'm particularly clairvoyant about when that project will be done but our interest remains undiminished," he said.

Spurgeon said last month that his company was still optimistic it would build a coal-to-liquids plant in the Northern Panhandle. He said Consol was still "fully committed" to the project. He estimated that the project has been delayed by four to six months because SES had dropped out.

Hoffman is not sure who will become Consol's lead coal-to-liquids executive. He said the company is "still discussing our second-tier organizational changes that are needed as a result of the changes we announced last week. In terms of who's going to head up specific projects, those are things that will probably be decided in coming weeks."

Consol did not announce Spurgeon's retirement. "There were a number of changes in the organization," Hoffman said. "We only announced externally the senior-level people."

The company did announce last Tuesday the consolidation of the management of Consol Energy and its majority-owned subsidiary CNX Gas Corp. under Consol CEO Brett Harvey.

Consol also announced the retirement of Peter Lilly, president of the company's coal business.

While at Consol, Lilly successfully negotiated a new contract between the Bituminous Coal Operators Association and the UMWA; completed the integration of the former AMVEST mining operations into Consol; and served as Consol's representative on the boards of directors of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Waterways Council Inc. and the World Coal Institute.

Lilly, 60, is a native of Beckley. He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and has a master's degree in business administration from Harvard University. He joined Consol in 2002. He had been president and CEO of Triton Coal Co. and Vulcan Coal Holdings.  Before that he held senior management positions with Peabody Holding Company Inc., now Peabody Energy.

"Could concentrated solar energy be used to reverse combustion and convert carbon dioxide back into gasoline? That's what scientists at Sandia National Laboratories, in Albuquerque, NM, aim to find out by building a novel reactor that can chemically "reenergize" carbon dioxide.

The device uses a two-stage thermochemical reaction to break down carbon dioxide to produce carbon monoxide, says Nathan Siegel, a senior member of technical staffat Sandia's Solar Technologies Department and one of the researchers developing the technology. "Carbon dioxide is a combustion product, so what we're doing is reversing combustion," he says. The carbon monoxide can then readily be employed to produce a range of different fuels, including hydrogen, methanol, and gasoline, using conventional technologies."

The fact that our - thinking positively - future WV coal-to-oil conversion plants, like the 88 such units the Chinese intend building over the next five years, might produce a surplus of CO2, could, as we've earlier suggested, be a good thing.

If we're going to be stuck with the darned stuff, let's find a way to employ it, rather than spend a lot of money to stash it uselessly away. Never forget the true lessons of Thoreau and Walden Pond: Economy - using what you've got for all it's worth, and then using it again - is the essence of environmentalism.

Oh, and check out, again, the last statement of our excerpt:

"The carbon monoxide can then readily be employed to produce a range of different fuels, including hydrogen, methanol, and gasoline, using conventional technologies."

As if there were nothing to it. Of course you make liquid fuels from odd stuff like carbon monoxide (and coal), "using conventional technologies". For some people in the know, Mike, it's old hat.

Why don't we feel that way?