Sometime this summer, in Odessa, Tex., the Summit Power Group plans to break ground on a $2.5 billion coal gasification power plant. Summit has named this the Texas Clean Energy Project. With good reason.

Part of the promise of this power plant is its use of gasified coal; because the gasification process doesn’t burn the coal, it makes for far cleaner energy than a traditional coal-fired plant.

But another reason this plant — and a handful of similar plants — has such enormous potential is that it will capture some 90 percent of the facility’s already reduced carbon emissions. Some of those carbon emissions will be used to make fertilizer. The rest will be sold to the oil industry, which will push it into the ground, as part of a process called enhanced oil recovery.

Let us count the potential benefits if plants like this became commonplace. Currently, some 40 percent of carbon emissions come from power plants. The carbon-capture process Summit will employ “is the only technology that can reduce CO2 emissions from existing, stationary sources by up to 90 percent,” said Judi Greenwald of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. To put it another way, this technology could be a climate-saver.

Second: Environmentalists could call off their war against the coal industry, thus saving tens of thousands of jobs, as climate-destroying coal-fired plants were replaced by clean coal gasification plants. Third: Gas-fired power plants, which already emit 50 percent less carbon than coal-fired plants, could become even cleaner if they included the carbon-capture technology. Fourth: Using carbon emissions to recover previously ungettable oil has the potential to unlock vast untapped American reserves. Last year, ExxonMobil reported that enhanced oil recovery would allow it to extend the life of a single oil field in West Texas by 20 years.

Fifth: China. Too often, American environmentalists ignore the reality that the Chinese are far more concerned with economic growth than climate change. (And who can blame them? All they want is what we already have.) The Chinese are relentlessly building coal-fired power plants, which Western environmentalists couldn’t stop even if they tried. But if power plants like Summit’s — which will turn CO₂ into profitable products — were to gain momentum, that would likely catch China’s attention. A reduction of carbon emissions from Chinese power plants would do far more to help reverse climate change than — dare I say it? — blocking the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

The Summit executive most closely associated with the Texas Clean Energy Project is Laura Miller. Her environmental credentials are unimpeachable. As the mayor of Dallas in 2006, Miller founded the Texas Clean Air Cities Coalition to fight a plan by TXU Energy, a big power company, to build 11 new coal-fired plants. During a trip to Europe, she saw both coal gasification and carbon-capture technologies being used. When she left the mayor’s office, she signed up with Summit and became a passionate advocate of the Odessa plant. Eric Redman, the president and chief executive of Summit Power, describes her as “the public face of the project.” (As a young man, by the way, Redman wrote one of the classic works about Congress, “The Dance of Legislation.” It’s still worth reading.)

So who could possibly be against coal gasification and carbon capture? Ratepayers, for one, mainly because carbon-capture technology is so expensive. In 2011, American Electric Power, or A.E.P., canceled a big carbon-capture project, in part because it was clear that state regulators were not going to allow the company to pass on the additional costs to its customers.

To help make the project economically viable, the Texas Clean Energy Project is getting a $450 million grant from the Department of Energy. (Absurdly, the Internal Revenue Service is requiring Summit to pay taxes on the federal grant, which means that a third of it will go right back to the government.) But if the plant proves successful — as I believe it will — and others replicate it, the costs will inevitably come down, and federal help won’t likely be needed.

And the other opponent? None other than Bill McKibben, Mr. “Stop Keystone” himself. When I e-mailed him to ask whether he supported carbon-capture for enhanced oil recovery, he replied that if carbon were sent back into the ground “the worst possible thing to do with it is to get more oil above ground.” He continued, “It’s time to keep oil in the earth, not to mention gas and coal.”

To me, at least, his answer suggests that his crusade has blinded him to the real problem. The enemy is not fossil fuels; it is the damage that is done because of the way we use fossil fuels. If we can find a way to create clean energy from fossil fuels, then they can become (as they used to say) part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

Thankfully, Laura Miller and Eric Redman understand that, even if Bill McKibben doesn’t.

TCEP, a large scale commercial coal gasification power/polygen project that Summit is developing near Odessa, Texas, will capture ninety percent (90%) of its carbon dioxide for use in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) by producers in the Permian Basin of West Texas, boosting U.S. oil production by some seven (7) million barrels per year and generating thousands of jobs in Texas and throughout the U.S.  TCEP will also produce more than 700,000 tons per year of urea as fertilizer for U.S. farmers and a long-term, 200 megawatt supply of ultra-clean and low-carbon electric power for CPS Energy, the municipal electric and gas utility of San Antonio.

At the event, Summit also announced that Minnesota-based CHS Inc. is the purchaser of TCEP’s entire urea output, which is expected to reduce annual U.S. imports and U.S. dependence on foreign urea fertilizer by more than ten percent (10%).  CHS, a Fortune 100 company owned by farmers, ranchers, and cooperatives across the United States, has signed a long-term off-take agreement with Summit.  On Tuesday, CHS also announced that it will make a small equity investment in the project.  TCEP will boost U.S. domestic production of urea fertilizer for American farmers by approximately twenty percent (20%).

Major transactions now in progress and memorialized in the memorandum of understanding signed by the parties yesterday include a new engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract for TCEP’s gasification and chemical block, which Summit intends to award to the Sinopec Engineering Group (SEG).  SEG is the newly consolidated engineering subsidiary of Sinopec Group, one of the world’s largest companies, and has extensive experience in the design engineering of coal conversion projects and other major oil, gas, and chemical plants in more than fifty (50) countries worldwide.  SEG will select U.S. construction contractors for the TCEP chemical block, which like TCEP’s power block, will be built by U.S. construction workers. 

Under a previously signed EPC contract for the power block, Siemens will provide a state-of-the-art Siemens high-hydrogen combustion turbine to be manufactured by U.S. workers in North Carolina.  Selas Fluid Processing Corporation, a U.S. affiliate of Linde, will continue to provide key equipment and otherwise support SEG in the chemical block EPC contract.

To support SEG’s new EPC contract, Summit and SEG also disclosed that the Export-Import Bank of China (“Chexim”) is expected to be the sole financial lender to TCEP, subject to completion of the EPC contract and Chexim’s customary due diligence.  Summit stated that the Chexim loan amount, which will be based on a percentage of the dollar amount of SEG’s EPC contract, will be sufficient to satisfy all of TCEP’s needs for project debt.   

As previously announced, Whiting Petroleum Corporation has executed a contract to purchase a major portion of TCEP’s captured carbon dioxide for use in Whiting’s enhanced oil recovery operations in Texas.  Denver-based Whiting is a publicly traded independent exploration and production company, and operates one of America’s largest EOR projects at its North Ward Estes Field in the Permian Basin. 

TCEP’s total sales of captured CO₂ for EOR will be approximately 2.5 million tons per year.  In Texas EOR operations, the captured CO₂ is effectively a solvent that helps release trapped oil for recovery.  No “hydro-fracking” is involved, and any injected CO₂ that comes to the surface with the produced oil is re-captured, re-compressed, and re-injected, resulting ultimately in permanent geological sequestration of CO₂.

Other previously announced contracts noted at the luncheon ceremony include the long-term power purchase agreement (PPA) with CPS Energy of San Antonio, the largest municipal electric and gas utility in the United States, and a contract with Houston-based Shrieve Chemical Company to purchase TCEP’s output of sulfuric acid.

Because of TCEP’s high carbon capture rate, the power CPS Energy buys from TCEP for San Antonio consumers will have less than one-tenth the CO₂ emissions per kilowatt-hour of power from a plant that burns coal and less than one-quarter the CO₂ emissions per kilowatt-hour of power from a plant that burns natural gas.  CPS Energy is the first utility in the U.S. to enter into a PPA that will provide power with such ultra-low CO₂ emissions from a commercial scale, hydrocarbon-based power plant. Shrieve Chemical Co. will market all of the approximately 50,000 tons per year of merchant-quality sulfuric acid that would otherwise have been vented to the atmosphere as sulfur dioxide in the absence of TCEP’s low-emissions gasification technology.     

The total cost of TCEP will be more than $2.5 billion.  Of this amount, $450 million will be provided by a cost-sharing award announced in 2010 by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under DOE’s Clean Coal Power Initiative (CCPI), a Congressional program to aid development of power projects that capture their carbon dioxide.  The Siemens and Linde equipment used at TCEP are commercially proven and allow CO₂, sulfur, and mercury to be removed from the project’s gas stream prior to combustion, leaving only a high-hydrogen/low-carbon clean “syngas” as the sole fuel that is burned. 

TCEP has been repeatedly described by U.S. Department of Energy officials as one of DOE’s “flagship” projects that will prove the commercial viability of carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS), whereby carbon dioxide is used to increase domestic oil production instead of being released to the atmosphere and will ultimately be stored safely and permanently in the ground – at least 99 percent of it for at least 1,000 years, as mandated by Texas State Law.

Summit is in discussions with a number of potential U.S., European, and Asian sources of equity to accompany Chexim’s provision of project debt for TCEP.  Summit’s bankers and financial advisors for this purpose include the New York office of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), the New York and Beijing offices of the China International Capital Corporation (CICC), and Washington, D.C.-based Wellford Energy – representatives of each attended today’s San Antonio announcement.  TCEP has already obtained all the permits and contracts needed to allow financing and construction of the plant.  Financial closing and start of construction for the project are now targeted for the end of 2012 and the beginning of 2013 respectively.  From the start of construction, the project will require between three and four years to be built, commissioned, and achieve commercial operation. 

“This is a milestone event for TCEP,” said Donald Paul Hodel, the Chairman of Summit Power Group and a former U.S. Secretary of Energy and U.S. Secretary of the Department of the Interior under President Ronald Reagan.  “Because of its full commercial scale and its exceptionally clean use of coal as a chemical feedstock instead of a fuel, TCEP has always been recognized as a project of true global significance.  The coming together in San Antonio of so many U.S., European, and Asian entities to help ensure that TCEP is financed and built underscores the full extent of domestic and international support for TCEP.  We are pleased to have created a global, collaborative initiative that will not only create U.S. jobs and so many valuable products to meet U.S. needs, but raises the bar in clean energy and supply chain innovation.”

Other attendees at yesterday’s announcement included Scott Klara, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy for the U.S. Department of Energy; Samuel Coleman, Regional Administrator for Region 6 of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency;  and representatives of the buyers of TCEP’s four major products:  CHS Inc., Whiting Petroleum, CPS Energy, and Shrieve Chemical Company. Also in attendance were Sinopec Engineering Group, Siemens, and Linde, the key TCEP contractors; The Export-Import Bank of China as the prospective project lender; potential U.S. equity investors in TCEP; Chinese government officials; and local Texas elected officials who have supported TCEP, including State Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, State Rep. Tryon Lewis, R-Odessa, and City of Odessa Mayor Larry Melton.  Other attendees included representatives from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Clean Air Task Force, one of the national environmental groups that has strongly supported TCEP from the outset.

For more information about the Texas Clean Energy Project, please go to the website: http://www.texascleanenergyproject.com, or contact Laura Miller, Director of Projects, Texas, for Summit Power Group at lmiller@summitpower.com, 214.763.0600

The two, firm-price, turnkey EPC contracts that guarantee price, schedule and performance for the integrated coal gasification combined cycle (IGCC) project were finalized in December by the project’s three EPC contractors: Siemens Energy Inc.; Selas Fluid Processing Corporation, a subsidiary of The Linde Group; and SK Engineering & Construction, a major Korean contractor. The total value of the EPC contracts is approximately $2 billion.

Selas Fluid Processing and SK E&C will supply a complete chemical block capable of producing syngas by gasifying Powder River Basin coal. A portion of the syngas fuels a Siemens power block, and the balance is used for the production of granulated urea. The chemical block captures 90% of the CO2 from the syngas and compresses the CO2 for sale to the mature, enhanced oil recovery (EOR) market in West Texas. The chemical block EPC contract also includes coal handling, coal gasification based on two Siemens SFG-500 gasifiers, gas cleanup, mercury removal, ammonia and urea production facilities, sulfuric acid plant, water treatment, CO2 compression, site preparation, plant buildings and other goods and services.

In the second EPC contract, Siemens Energy will supply a nominally rated 400MW combined cycle power plant capable of operating on syngas and natural gas. The power block is comprised of an SGT6-5000F gas turbine capable of operating on high-hydrogen syngas or natural gas. The power block includes an air-cooled condenser for plant cooling, which greatly reduces the water needed for the project, and a high-voltage switchyard.

A separate, 15-year O&M contract was also signed for the complete, turnkey operation and maintenance of the entire 600-acre facility, including day-to-day operation, and short term and long term maintenance. The contract, signed by Linde’s Gases Division, includes guarantees of performance and availability by Linde’s Gases Division and Siemens for the full 15-year contract period.

TCEP is a leading carbon capture and storage (CCS) project for the U.S. Department of Energy, which in 2010 awarded the project $450 million under the third round of its Clean Coal Power Initiative (CCPI). CCPI is a cost-shared collaboration between the Federal government and private industry, aimed at stimulating investment in low-emission, coal-based power generation technologies through successful commercial demonstrations. Of the $450 million, $211 million comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The facility is expected to be fully operational in 2015.

“TCEP is among the most innovative and promising projects selected under DOE’s Clean Coal Power Initiative,” said Charles McConnell, Assistant Secretary nominee and Chief Operating Officer of DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy (FE). “The IGCC technology it will demonstrate is a prototype for clean and efficient coal-based power plants of the near future. We are proud of Fossil Energy’s role in the research, development and deployment of IGCC and the technologies in our carbon capture, utilization, and storage and advanced energy technologies programs, and pleased to collaborate with Summit Power Group on this project.”

DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy has been instrumental in the research, development, and deployment of IGCC and other innovative energy technologies and is playing a pivotal role in advancing America’s energy future while helping to enhance environmental stewardship.

Gasification is a chemical process that uses oxygen and steam at high temperatures and pressures to convert coal into synthesis gas, also known as syngas, which is mainly a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The syngas is cleaned to remove impurities and sent to a gas turbine where it undergoes combustion to produce electricity. The hot flue gas from the gas turbine is used to generate steam, which is fed to a steam turbine to produce additional electricity. The process is known as IGCC because coal-fired gasification is integrated into a combined-cycle system that produces electricity from both the gas turbine and the steam turbine.

In the TCEP carbon capture plant, the syngas will first undergo a “shift reaction” to produce additional hydrogen and CO2, cleaned of impurities, and then separated into pure streams of CO2 and high-hydrogen, low-carbon syngas. The high-hydrogen syngas will be used as fuel in an advanced combustion turbine, producing an extremely low-carbon flue gas. The vast majority of the approximately 2.5 million standard tons per year of CO2 that will be captured annually by the plant will be used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in the West Texas Permian Basin.

“This is perhaps the best evidence yet that two distinct yet equally important technologies for advanced coal projects — coal gasification and carbon capture — are mature enough technologically to enable a commercial scale power plant that incorporates both to get full warranties for performance, reliability, availability, efficiency and emissions control,” said Donald Hodel, Chairman of the Board and co-founder of Summit Power Group. “Every American who is concerned about energy should be excited and proud that from national security and environmental sustainability standpoints this day has come, and we give credit to the U.S. Department of Energy, Congress, our Texas elected officials, and our construction partners for staying the course and helping us reach this day.”

Summit Power Group is a 20-year-old company that is based in Seattle, WA, and has developed more than 7,000 megawatts and billions of dollars worth of U.S. power projects, primarily natural gas-fueled and wind energy, and solar power projects through a photovoltaic (PV) solar joint venture called NorthLight with Norway-based Renewable Energy Corporation (REC). TCEP is Summit’s first project using coal as a feedstock, in this case for a gasification process that does not burn coal but instead converts the coal into clean-burning industrial gases and a pure stream of CO2 that is captured and sequestered.

The Linde Group is a world-leading gases and engineering company with approximately 50,000 people working in more than 100 countries worldwide. In the 2010 financial year, it achieved sales of USD 17.9 billion (EUR 12.9 billion). The strategy of The Linde Group is geared towards long-term profitable growth and focuses on the expansion of its international business with forward-looking products and services. Linde acts responsibly towards its shareholders, business partners, employees, society and the environment — in every one of its business areas, regions and locations across the globe. Linde is committed to technologies and products that unite the goals of customer value and sustainable development.

For more information, see The Linde Group online at http://www.linde.com .

Siemens AG SI +0.17% is a global powerhouse in electronics and electrical engineering, and operates in the industry, energy and healthcare sectors. For more than 160 years, Siemens has built a reputation for leading- edge innovation and the quality of its products, services and solutions. With 405,000 employees in 190 countries, Siemens reported worldwide sales of $104.3 billion in fiscal 2009. With its U.S. corporate headquarters in Washington, DC, Siemens in the USA reported sales of $21.3 billion and employs more than 60,000 people throughout all 50 states and Puerto Rico.

SK Engineering and Construction (E&C) Co., Ltd ( www.skec.com ) is one of the world’s best qualified engineering, procurement, construction, and maintenance services organizations. Since its incorporation in 1977, SK E&C has developed into one of Korea’s leaders in the engineering and construction industry. The company, which built Korea’s largest oil refinery complex, is a world-class competitor in Korea and abroad in plant, civil, building, and housing works. Its parent company, SK Group, is Korea’s third largest conglomerate and one of the leading business organizations in the world, made up of 92 member companies, including 16 that are listed on the Korea Stock Exchange. The company employs 35,000 people of many nationalities.

For more information about the Texas Clean Energy Project ( www.texascleanenergyproject.com ) or Summit Power Group, contact Laura Miller, Summit’s Director of Projects, Texas, at 214-763-0600, or email lmiller@summitpower.com. For more information about DOE-sponsored clean coal projects, including TCEP, go to www.fossil.energy.gov .

83 S. King Street, Suite 200 Seattle, WA 98104 Phone: 206.780.3551 Fax: 206.780.3571 www.summitpower.com

SOURCE: Summit Power Group

Texas Clean Energy Project to Sell Sulfuric Acid to Shrieve Chemical

DALLAS, Texas, October 27, 2011 – Summit Power Group’s Texas Clean Energy Project (TCEP) will enter into a long-term, exclusive contract with The Woodlands-based Shrieve Chemical Company to market 100% of the sulfuric acid produced at the power/polygen project, located near Odessa.

TCEP is able to manufacture sulfuric acid as a commercial product because TCEP, a gasification project, does not burn coal but instead uses coal as a feedstock in a chemical process. That process allows the sulfur to be captured and converted into a valuable commodity instead of being burned and released into the atmosphere as sulfur dioxide.
The sulfuric acid agreement is the fourth of its kind for TCEP, which has previously announced a commitment for the sale of all of TCEP’s electricity, and signed contracts for all of TCEP’s urea fertilizer and for TCEP’s compressed carbon dioxide, which will be used in enhanced oil recovery in the West Texas Permian Basin.
TCEP, when completed in 2015, will be a first-of-a-kind integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) 400 MW plant that will capture 90 percent of the carbon dioxide, 99 percent of the sulfur, more than 95 percent of the mercury, and eliminate more than 90 percent of the nitrogen oxides produced by the process – making it overall the cleanest coal-fueled power project ever permitted in Texas.
TCEP was awarded $450 million by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2010. The award comprised funds from both the Clean Coal Power Initiative (CCPI) and the America Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The project will create more than 1,500 construction jobs, more than 150 high-paying full-time plant jobs when operational, and approximately 8,000 ancillary jobs with vendors in manufacturing, distribution, transportation and professional services.
“We are pleased to have entered into another long-term sales agreement for one of TCEP’s commercial products, bringing us a step closer to financial closing with equity investors and lenders and groundbreaking after the first of the year,” said Eric Redman, President of Summit Power Group.

Shrieve will market the sulfuric acid to mining, manufacturing and fertilizer customers. Linde Process Plants, Inc., an affiliate of TCEP’s major contractor, selected MECS SULFOX® to build the sulfuric acid

plant, which will convert a hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) stream from a Rectisol® gas cleanup unit downstream of TCEP’s gasifiers into approximately 50,000 tons per year of merchant-quality sulfuric acid. Production is scheduled to be online in early to mid-2015 when TCEP goes operational.

About Summit

Summit is a 20-year-old company based in Seattle, WA, that has developed more than 7,000 megawatts and billions of dollars worth of U.S. power projects, primarily natural gas-fired and wind energy, with solar power recently added through a photovoltaic (PV) solar joint venture called NorthLight with Norway-based Renewable Energy Corporation (REC). TCEP is Summit’s first project using coal as a feedstock, in this case for a coal gasification process that does not burn coal but instead converts the coal by chemical processes into clean-burning industrial gases and a pure stream of CO2 that is captured and sequestered.

About Shrieve
Shrieve Chemical Company was founded in 1978 in The Woodlands, Texas, and has grown as an international supplier of organic and inorganic industrial commodity chemicals. Shrieve has become one of the leading suppliers of sulfur and sulfuric acid within North America. As marketers of industrial chemicals, synthetic fluids, proprietary refrigeration oils and additives, Shrieve continues to predicate its business philosophy on solution oriented relationships, exceptional service, and innovative marketing.

For more information about the Texas Clean Energy Project (www.texascleanenergyproject.com) or Summit Power Group, please contact Laura Miller, Summit Power’s Director of Projects, Texas, at 214-763-0600, or email lmiller@summitpower.com.

For more information about Shrieve Chemical Company (www.shrieve.com), please contact Avis Fuller, Executive Assistant, at 281-367-4226 or email afuller@shrieve.com.

# # #

ARLINGTON, Va. – The Department of Energy will emphasize funding for carbon capture, sequestration and utilization research and projects as a way to “move the needle” on climate change in the coming decade in the absence of climate legislation, a top official said.

Chuck McConnell, chief operating officer of the DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy, said at a conference today there’s nobody in his office “who’s going to wait around for climate legislation and be paralyzed in the meantime.”

The likelihood of climate legislation clearing both chambers of Congress has fallen substantially since Senate Republicans filibustered a cap-and-trade bill in 2010. With fossil fuels not going away anytime soon, McConnell said his agency would continue funding research into technologies for capturing and using carbon emissions.

“We’re going to take a business and industrial approach to it and put together market plans and business plans that industry can get behind and want to invest, not be forced to invest,” McConnell said.

DOE has touted using captured carbon dioxide in enhanced oil recovery, which industry has increasingly turned to for extracting oil that first-line and second-line methods can’t access.

McConnell said funding the research is especially important because companies are running out of carbon dioxide for use in EOR, “Yet we’re venting it like there’s nobody’s business.” One EOR method involves injecting carbon dioxide into wells to make crude in deep rock formations less viscous and easier to extract.

The DOE says the U.S. has more than a trillion barrels of undeveloped oil resources still in the ground. About 430 billion barrels of that is recoverable using today’s technology, including EOR methods, according to the U.S. Energy Department.

EOR is most common right now in the Permian Basin region of Texas and New Mexico. Some companies in Texas, including ExxonMobil Corp., have started shifting toward EOR to access harder-to-reach oil as first- and second-line methods extract less and less oil.

Using EOR methods could add as many as 2.5 million jobs and reduce oil imports by 30 to 40 percent in the next 20 years, McConnell said. The Texas Bureau of Economic Geology has suggested that extracting even 10 percent of the crude that EOR methods can reach in the state could add over $200 billion to the Texas economy and create 1.5 million jobs in the state.

Carbon capture, sequestration and utilization projects are occurring right now in the absence of congressional action on climate, because they make sense economically to industry.”

He added that government subsidies have helped the cause.

The DOE in late September finalized $450 million in previously announced funding for the Texas Clean Energy Project near Odessa, Texas, a 400-megawatt power plant that will capture 90 percent of emitted carbon for later EOR use.

Billions of dollars in similar projects are underway nationwide with DOE funding, he said, including FutureGen 2.0, a project for retrofitting St. Louis-based Ameren Corp.’s 200-megawatt coal plant in Meredosia, Ill.

“That’s what we’re supposed to be doing at Fossil Energy, catalyzing industries that are going to have a long-term future in this country,” he said.

Enhanced oil recovery is one facet of the DOE’s fossil-fuel portfolio that also includes research and development into shale gas technologies, as well as technologies for capturing, sequestering and utilizing carbon emissions from coal combustion.

But with Congress looking for ways to reduce the federal deficit, McConnell said he felt certain the DOE’s budget would face cuts in the coming years.

“We have to figure out how to do more with less,” he said. “Sounds trite, but it’s absolutely true.”

Summit is developing several CCS projects, most notably the Texas Clean Energy Project (TCEP), a gasification facility with ninety percent (90%) carbon capture that will produce electric power and fertilizer, as well as captured carbon dioxide. TCEP is a showcase project of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Clean Coal Power Initiative, which made a $450 million award to TCEP in 2010. The millions of tons of carbon dioxide captured from TCEP will be injected into depleted oil fields to enhance oil production and will be geologically sequestered from the atmosphere.

In his new role, Mr. Mackler will help manage commercial and policy aspects of the company’s carbon-capture initiatives. He will focus on carbon-capture power projects and emerging technologies, as well as business opportunities for climate-friendly commercial uses of captured carbon such as enhanced oil production.

“Sasha was an integral part of the Bipartisan Policy Center Energy Project, helping shape the organization’s vision for a secure and clean energy future,” stated James L. Jones, General, USMC (ret.), the recently departed National Security Advisor to President Obama, former Supreme Allied Commander of Europe, and current co-chair of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Energy Project. “We’ll miss Sasha at the BPC, but I expect his ongoing contributions to our country’s clean-energy future to be significant in his new capacity at Summit.”

Mr. Mackler worked at the Bipartisan Policy Center as a founding staff member of its Energy Project, which played a key role in drafting recent Federal energy laws. Mr. Mackler oversaw numerous projects in close collaboration with leaders from the U.S. business, political, environmental and financial communities on the complex issues of energy production, incentives, environmental impacts and innovation. His work at the Bipartisan Policy Center has helped to inform and establish viable, long-term progress in clean energy, as well as stimulate significant policy debate in Washington, DC.

Prior to his position with the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Energy Project, Mr. Mackler worked closely with leaders of the U.S. energy sector as the research director for the National Commission on Energy Policy. He was also part of the team tasked with developing market-based emission trading programs in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Air Markets Division, and as an engineer designing high-performance buildings at London-based design and engineer consultancy ARUP.

“Sasha is singularly qualified to help make carbon-capture projects a reality in the U.S. and abroad,” stated Eric Redman, president of Summit Power Group. “As a carbon policy expert, he is respected and admired by national leaders in the private sector, the public sector, and the environmental community. We expect Sasha to help drive development of innovative low-carbon energy projects that will yield important economic, strategic and environmental benefits for the U.S. and the world.”

Mr. Mackler earned a Masters in Public Administration (MPA) degree from Columbia University, which also awarded him a Masters of Science (MS) degree in earth-resources engineering. His Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in earth-resources engineering is from the University of Rochester.

“Summit Power operates at the very focal point of commercial-scale carbon-capture projects, and therefore at the intersection of clean energy technology, policy and finance,” said Mackler. “As part of the Summit Carbon Capture team, I look forward to putting my experience and skills into practice to help develop such projects and make a better energy and environmental future.”

About Summit Power Group, LLC Summit Power Group, LLC, excels in the innovative development of clean electric power projects. Led by experienced professionals with an extensive knowledge of the energy industry in the United States and abroad, Summit has a remarkable track record of developing large, low-carbon energy projects with over 7,000 megawatts of electric power plants in operation, and over 2,000 MW in development or under construction. Total Summit-led projects in service or under contract, including O & M agreements, represent over 7 billion dollars of investment.

HOUSTON and DALLAS, Texas, July 20, 2011 – Summit Power Group, LLC and Blue Strategies, LLC today announce the signing of a historic, long-term carbon dioxide (CO2) sales agreement with Whiting Petroleum Corporation for CO2 that will be captured by Summit’s Texas Clean Energy Project (TCEP), a coal gasification with carbon capture project being developed in Penwell, Texas, outside Odessa.

TCEP will be a first-of-its-kind, integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) 400MW power/poly-gen plant that will capture 90 percent of the carbon dioxide, 99 percent of the sulfur, more than 95 percent of the mercury, and eliminate more than 90 percent of the nitrogen oxides produced by the process. When TCEP received its final air quality permit last December with no opposition or requests for a hearing, it became the cleanest coal-fueled power plant ever permitted in Texas. Its high carbon-capture rate reduces the total amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted to the atmosphere to less than 10 percent of the emissions for power from a conventional coal plant, and less than 25 percent of those for power from a highly efficient, natural gas-fired plant.

Summit, a leading power developer based in Seattle, WA, and Blue Strategies, a Houston-based developer of physical CO2 projects, partnered in October 2009 to market TCEP’s 2.5 million tons per year of CO2 to oil producers in the West Texas Permian Basin.

“This is the first of several CO2 off-take agreements with TCEP, and we are pleased to have negotiated this historic first one with a company that has a long and successful history of doing enhanced oil recovery in the Permian,” said Blue Strategies Executive Vice President Russell Martin.

Whiting Petroleum Corporation, a Delaware corporation, is an independent oil and gas company that acquires, develops and explores for crude oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids primarily in the Permian Basin, Rocky Mountains, Mid-Continent, Gulf Coast and Michigan regions of the United States. The Company’s largest projects are in the Bakken and Three Forks plays in North Dakota and its Enhanced Oil Recovery projects, which have historically used naturally occurring geological CO2 for injection in its EOR projects in Oklahoma and Texas.

Under the new agreement, Whiting will purchase 80 million cubic feet (80,000 Mcf/d) of compressed CO2 per day from TCEP, representing approximately 60 percent of TCEP’s total volume of captured CO2, during the first five years of TCEP’s operation, with gradually declining amounts and an option to extend the purchases thereafter. In the Permian Basin, approximately one additional barrel of oil can be recovered for each 6,000 cubic feet (6 Mcf) of compressed CO2 injected into the oil field. TCEP will begin delivering CO2 to Whiting when the plant commences operations in late 2014 or early 2015; construction is scheduled to begin at the end of this year.

“This is another important milestone for the Texas Clean Energy Project, coming on the heels of last month’s power purchase announcement with CPS Energy in San Antonio, “ said Donald Hodel, Chairman of Summit Power. “We now have sales commitments in place for all three of TCEP’s main commercial products – electric power, urea for fertilizer, and CO2 for enhanced oil recovery – and that is obviously key to getting this project underway.”

The 15-year Whiting-TCEP contract is historic because CO2 for EOR operations in the Permian Basin and elsewhere have generally been carried out with CO2 that is geological in origin, i.e. formed naturally in underground reservoirs in New Mexico and Colorado and brought to the surface by wells such as those used to produce natural gas. More than 3,000 miles of CO2 –dedicated pipeline currently transports and distributes geologic CO2 throughout the Permian Basin. Whiting will be the first in the Permian to purchase CO2 from a power project that will be produced through the coal-gasification process. Gasification allows the carbon to be stripped from coal, then captured and compressed, for deep underground sequestration in mature oil fields. Unlike conventional coal plants, TCEP will not burn coal but will instead use coal as a chemical feedstock to produce extremely low-carbon, high-hydrogen synthesis gas (“syngas”) for power production and the manufacture of urea fertilizer.

TCEP received a $450 million award in 2010 from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Clean Coal Power Initiative (CCPI), the Department’s effort to create a new generation of energy processes that sharply reduce emissions from coal-fired power plants and reduce America’s dependence on imported energy resources.

In oil fields such as Whiting’s, the injected CO2 mixes with the oil that is left behind in the primary oil-well production and the secondary water- injection stage. Approximately 40 percent of the initially injected CO2 remains trapped underground. The remainder comes to the surface with the oil, but is then recaptured, recompressed, and re-injected. Ultimately, some 99 percent of the injected CO2 can be permanently stored (i.e. geologically sequestered) deep underground many thousands of feet below the water table, with no leakage to the atmosphere.

“We are extremely pleased to be the first oil producer in West Texas to start using manmade CO2 from coal for enhanced oil recovery,” said Whiting CEO James Volker. “This shift from geologic to manmade CO2 in the oil fields is a significant step forward for both the power industry and the oil industry. We are proud to be affiliated with this project.”

About Summit Power Group, LLC 

Summit Power Group, LLC excels in the innovative development of electric power projects. Led by experienced professionals with an extensive knowledge of the energy industry in the U.S. and abroad, Summit has a remarkable track record of developing large, low-carbon energy projects with over 7,000 megawatts of electric power plants in operation, representing over $7 billion in investment, and over 2,000 megawatts in development or under construction.

About Blue Strategies, LLC 

Blue Strategies is a leading developer of CO2 projects involving the capture, compression and transportation of CO2. In addition, Blue Strategies works very closely with private and governmental agencies to develop procedures around assuring injected CO2 remains sequestered in the reservoir and meets the requirements for carbon offset registries. The management team has over 100 years of experience in managing physical CO2.

About Whiting Petroleum Corporation 

For more information on Whiting Petroleum Corporation, please visit the website www.whiting.com.

For more information contact: 

Laura Miller, Director of Projects, Texas, for Summit Power Group, at 214-763-0600 or lmiller@summitpower.com.

Matt Harmer, for Blue Strategies, at 801-438-1541 or mharmer@bluesource.com.

John B. Kelso, Director of Investor Relations, Whiting Petroleum Corporation, at 303-837-1661 or john.kelso@whiting.com.

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SAN ANTONIO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Summit Power Group’s Texas Clean Energy Project (TCEP) will enter into a 25-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with the country’s largest municipally owned natural gas and electric utility, CPS Energy, which announced the agreement at a press conference today with San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro.

“We couldn’t be more delighted to be entering into a long-term purchase agreement with a utility company that truly understands the importance of securing ultra-low carbon coal’s place in the country’s future energy portfolio as long as it is clean, affordable and reliable”

CPS Energy President & CEO Doyle Beneby stated that the company will purchase 200MW of power from TCEP, a first-of-its-kind integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) 400 MW power/poly-gen plant that will capture 90 percent of the carbon dioxide, 99 percent of the sulfur, more than 95 percent of the mercury, and eliminate more than 90 percent of the nitrogen oxides produced by the process – making it overall the cleanest coal-fueled power project ever permitted in Texas.

The power off-take arrangement marks a major milestone for TCEP, which has already marketed its other two major commercial products, urea fertilizer and compressed carbon dioxide for use in enhanced oil recovery in the West Texas Permian Basin, and plans to break ground in Penwell, Texas, outside Odessa by the end of the year, with a startup date in late 2014 or early 2015. TCEP received its final air quality permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) last December with no opposition or requests for a hearing. Summit Power was one of five clean technology companies introduced today by CPS Energy to an audience of San Antonio community and business leaders at the downtown campus of the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). CPS announced partnerships with the companies as part of its New Energy Economy vision and to help offset the mothballing of the utility’s coal-fired J.T. Deely Power Plant by 2018, about 15 years earlier than planned, with clean coal, solar, natural gas, and energy efficiency and conservation.

Officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy applauded CPS’s endeavors. “San Antonio is stepping up to lead Texas and our nation into a clean energy future –and proving that investing in innovative technology to protect our health and the environment is also a great way to create jobs,” U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in a statement released at the press conference.

Mayor Julian Castro has made it a priority of his administration to make San Antonio a hub for energy development and a recognized leader in clean energy technology. All five companies participating in Monday’s press conference announced economic development initiatives to support the Mayor’s vision; TCEP will open a customer relations office in San Antonio; partner with UTSA’s Sustainable Energy Research Institute; and bring to UTSA its Carbon Management Advisory Board, an independently funded group of scientists, academicians and environmentalists who will review and verify TCEP’s carbon capture and sequestration protocols.

Stated DOE’s Thomas Sarkus, a Division Director within the Office of Major Demonstrations at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), who attended Monday’s event: “The U.S. Department of Energy applauds CPS Energy for its progressive energy stance that includes voluntarily phasing out old coal plants and replacing them with cleaner, low-carbon technologies such as the Texas Clean Energy Project, a DOE-sponsored, breakthrough, clean-coal project.” TCEP was awarded $450 million by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2010. The award comprised funds from both the Clean Coal Power Initiative (CCPI) and the America Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

“We couldn’t be more delighted to be entering into a long-term purchase agreement with a utility company that truly understands the importance of securing ultra-low carbon coal’s place in the country’s future energy portfolio as long as it is clean, affordable and reliable,” said Eric Redman, President of Summit Power Group. “We have a model project that will change how the world views coal-fueled power and its ability to capture almost all its CO2, and CPS Energy’s involvement makes that possible.”

About Summit

Summit is a 20-year-old company based in Seattle, WA, that has developed more than 7,000 megawatts and billions of dollars worth of U.S. power projects, primarily natural gas-fired and wind energy, with solar power recently added through a photovoltaic (PV) solar joint venture called NorthLight with Norway-based Renewable Energy Corporation (REC). TCEP is Summit’s first project using coal as a feedstock, in this case for a coal gasification process that does not burn coal but instead converts the coal by chemical processes into clean-burning industrial gases and a pure stream of CO2 that is captured and sequestered.

For more information about the Texas Clean Energy Project (www.texascleanenergyproject.com) or Summit Power Group, contact Laura Miller, Summit Power’s Director of Projects, Texas, at 214-763-0600, or email lmiller@summitpower.com.
Contacts

Summit Power Group
Laura Miller, 214-763-0600
lmiller@summitpower.com

Morgantown, W.Va. — Under a newly signed memorandum of understanding, CPS Energy, a municipally owned utility serving San Antonio, Texas, will purchase electricity generated by the Texas Clean Energy Project,  clean-coal project funded in part by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The agreement marks an important milestone for the project and a significant increase in clean electric power sourcing by CPS.

The Texas Clean Energy Project was a third round selection under the Office of Fossil Energy’s Clean Coal Power Initiative (CCPI), a cost-shared collaboration between the Federal Government and private industry aimed at stimulating investment in low-emission coal-based power generation technologies through successful commercial demonstrations. In January 2010, DOE awarded a cooperative agreement to Summit Texas Clean Energy to develop the 8‑year project. The agreement spans the design, construction, and demonstration of an integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plant that can co-produce high-value products and capture carbon dioxide (CO₂). DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) implements the CCPI and manages its projects.

By mid 2014, the Texas Clean Energy Project will provide electricity and other high-value products from the new 400‑megawatt IGCC plant west of Odessa, Texas. The captured CO₂ will be used for enhanced oil recovery in the West Texas Permian Basin, a process that both prevents the greenhouse gas from entering the atmosphere and enables more oil to be produced from regional oilfields.

By-products of energy production from the plant will not be wasted. Roughly 90 percent of the produced CO₂—approximately 3 million tons per year—will be captured and delivered to regional enhanced oil recovery sites. The plant will use CO₂ and a portion of the coal synthesis gas produced by the plant to make urea, a high-value chemical. Smaller quantities of commercial sulfuric acid, argon, and inert slag will also be marketed.

CPS Energy signed the memorandum as one of their many efforts to protect the environment by using a clean energy plan that includes coal power. To balance low utility bills for their customers with environmental responsibility, CPS uses a diverse mix of fuels to provide energy. The utility’s current fuel mix is 34.6 percent nuclear, 34.4 percent coal, 15 percent natural gas and oil, and 16 percent renewable energy, including wind and solar energy and landfill-generated methane gas. The Texas Clean Energy Project helps CPS meets its goal of providing reliable energy to meet their customers’ increasing energy demand while maintaining a healthy environment.

The Clean Coal Power Initiative and sponsorship of the Texas Clean Energy Project are part of DOE’s efforts to create a new generation of energy processes that sharply reduce emissions from coal-fired power plants and reduce the Nation’s dependence on imported energy resources. For more information, please visit NETL’s coal and power system’s website.

- End of Techline

For more information, contact:

Jenny Hakun, FE Office of Communications, 202-586-5616

Additional links:

Texas Clean Energy Project: http://www.texascleanenergyproject.com/

CPS Energy: http://www.cpsenergy.com/

Summit Power Group: http://www.summitpower.com/