Sundrop Fuels Moving Forward With 'Green Gas' Plant Near Alexandria

http://www.cenlachamber.org/Chamber/ChamberNews/Newsroom/tabid/812/EntryId/650/Sundrop-Fuels-Moving-Forward-With-Green-Gas-Plant-Near-Alexandria.aspx

by Billy Gunn, The Town Talk, Alexandria, Louisiana, May 22, 2012 -- 

Sundrop Fuels will announce today that it has entered a partnership with worldwide engineering and technology firm ThyssenKrupp Uhde for construction of its planned "green gasoline" production plant north of Alexandria.

In an email to The Town, Talk Sundrop also said it remained confident that beleaguered Chesapeake Energy's current problems would not stop construction. Chesapeake, an Oklahoma City-based natural gas exploration and production company, pledged $155 million last summer to buy half of Sundrop.

Chesapeake's stock has fallen precipitously in the past months as the company and its chief executive, Aubrey McClendon, deal with 10-year-low natural gas prices and questions about spending, corporate governance and immediate cash shortfalls.

"Chesapeake Energy is in full support; its internal situation does not affect our company or business strategy," Sundrop spokesman Steven Silvers said in an email.

A Chesapeake spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment Tuesday.

Silvers said Sundrop will complete financing for the plant in the fourth quarter of this year.

Louisiana Department of Economic Development Secretary Stephen Moret said Sundrop has told his office that Chesapeake's investment "is secure" and that the project "remains on track."

Construction for the plant will be in December on a 1,200-acre spread near Cowboy Town, with plant completion sometime in 2014, Silvers said.

Sundrop announced its plans to build the plant Nov. 22, 2011. The company will announce today a partnership with Uhde Corporation of America, a unit of ThyssenKrupp Uhde USA Inc. 

ThyssenKrupp Uhde provides engineering for chemical plants and refineries worldwide.

"More than 70 engineers from the two companies are now working together to complete designs for the Sundrop Fuels plant, which should begin construction late this year," Sundrop said.

The biofuels plant will be "the nation's first bona fide commercial 'green gasoline' production facility," the company said. It will yield "up to 50 million gallons of renewable gasoline annually while also serving as proving ground for Sundrop Fuels' proprietary biomass conversion technologies" for use in future plants, the company said.

Sundrop's technology will combine "forest residues and thinnings" with natural gas in an extra-hot process that the company has said wastes nothing and produces inexpensive car-ready fuel.

Plant designers are employing ThyssenKrupp Uhde's "High Temperature Winkler" gasification process in the drawings as well as Sundrop processes.

The plans are ambitious: After the Alexandria plant's 50 million gallon a year production, the company is to start work on bigger refineries that by 2020 will have production capacity of 1 billion gallons annually, Sundrop said.

Sundrop has not yet determined the sites of the future plants.

Last year local economic development officials and the Louisiana Department of Economic Development announced Sundrop's decision to locate on the acreage north of Alexandria off Interstate 49. They said then that once it's built the plant would employ 150 directly. There could be up to 1,100 indirect jobs created by the plant, officials said.

The plant is being built near a large-diameter natural gas pipeline that carries Haynesville Shale production from north Louisiana to processing facilities in south Louisiana. The pipeline will provide the natural gas needed for Sundrop's plant.