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Company is stepping back from coal gasification
plant: Tondu instead to use natural gas in Corpus Christi
Jun 14 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Tom Fowler Houston Chronicle Houston-based Tondu Corp. is backing away from plans to build a 600-megawatt power plant in Corpus Christi, saying costs for the coal gasification technology it planned to use were too high. He said a cost analysis showed the coal plant would be competitive with a natural gas-fired plant costing about $500 million, while the coal plant would have cost $1.5 billion. Developers of the coal gasification technology are not willing to provide performance guarantees and none will build the systems, Tondu said. That meant the company would have had to hire separate engineering and construction firms, he added. "I can literally make a phone call and have six bids to build a gas-fired plant by tomorrow. We could have one running by next spring," Tondu said. At least two other plants are under consideration in Texas using the gasification technology. Hunton Energy of Houston has announced it will build a 1,200-megawatt power plant in Fort Bend County that will use similar gasification technology but use pet coke, a refining byproduct, as fuel instead. Cogentrix Energy, a Goldman Sachs subsidiary that operates 20 power plants around the country, will provide an undisclosed amount of financing for the $2.4 billion project, according to Hunton officials. And Princeton, N.J.-based NRG is considering a coal gasification plant but says it will need significant government incentives for it to work. It has landed some guarantees on the performance of the gasification technology from Mitsubishi and is moving forward with a plant in New York based largely on promises from the state that it will buy the power produced by the facility. tom.fowler@chron.com |