EEP Newsletter - April 15, 2003
Just as we have thoroughly documented West Virginia University's intimate involvement in China's very extensive coal-to-liquid conversion, for fuels and chemicals, industrial development program, herein, from China, we learn that our own US Department of Energy has, perhaps indirectly, been assisting our foreign competitors with coal conversion technology, as well.
Comment follows the brief excerpt:
"Research on the Environment
I: Liquid Coal As A Fuel
An industrial complex is being built in China in order to perform direct liquefaction of coal, an ancient source of heat and energy.
The new complex being built in the Chinese region of Baotou (not far from Mongolia) uses a technique developed in the United States during the 1990s by Hydrocarbon Technology Inc., in conjunction with the USA Energy Department, involving the direct conversion of coal into hydrocarbon distillates."
So, technology developed by our own USDOE and a US corporation, for converting abundant coal into liquid fuels and chemicals, is being reduced to commercial practice by one of our most aggressive and adversarial foreign competitors.
We know all of that, it seems. What we don't know is why such CoalTL commercialization, with US Government, US educational institution and US corporate assistance, isn't taking place in West Virginia, or Pennsylvania, or anywhere else in this nation where American citizens depend upon coal for their livelihoods; or, where American citizens are embittered and impoverished by sending their wealth and their young soldiers overseas to finance and defend the OPEC powers, whose philosophies and practices are sometimes directly counter to the American ways of life and belief.
