Coal Gasification Plants Slowly Moving Ahead but Funding Proves to be the Industry's Next Hurdle, a Feature of "Navigating the Currents of Change" on Industrialinfo.com

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--One of the growing energy trends over the past few years has been the development of coal gasification projects. There are about 30 coal gasification projects in the works across the United States. These projects are non-IGCC, non-power generation coal gasification projects aimed at producing hydrocarbons mainly, syngas, LNG, and diesel. At this stage not one of these projects has moved into the construction phase. The capital required to engineering, equip and construct these plants totals more than $59 billion, and in the current credit crisis, finding the funding to move these projects forward has been challenging for the industry.

Environmentalists have added their two cents into the mix, saying the plants are dirty and will only increase our carbon footprint and cause more global warming. The price of oil also has a bearing on the plants' economical benefits as developers put a range of $60 to $70 per barrel of oil as the point where plants clear a good margin. Since the first of the plants is scheduled to go into operation around 2012, it's hard to predict where the price of oil will be when the plants come online.

Join Jay Brunson, Industrial Info's Vice President for Alternative Fuels as part of this week's "Navigating the Currents of Change" webcast, for an in-depth discussion on the controversial coal gasification industry. Topics of discussion include what types of material are being gasified; what types of plants are being built because of varying feedstock availability; how the current credit markets are affecting the gathering of funds to build these massive plants; and the companies that are the closest to starting actual construction.

Click Here to listen to this webcast, as well as many others covering topics important to industry spending, including trends, outlooks and focus segments.

Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is a marketing information service specializing in industrial process, energy and financial related markets with products and services ranging from industry news, analytics, forecasting, plant and project databases, as well as multimedia services.