THIS IS A PRESS RELEASE FROM THE OFFICE OF UNITED STATES SENATOR JAY ROCKEFELLER.

Washington, DC – Senator Jay Rockefeller today applauded the decision by CONSOL and SES to open the state’s first-ever coal-to-liquid plant in Benwood.

According to the company, the Benwood plant will convert coal into syngas that can be used as feedstock for the chemical industry. The plant will be located at the “mine mouth” with coal supplied form the nearby Shoemaker complex. The Benwood facility has been designed to allow for the addition of technology to also produce coal-based 87 octane gasoline (essentially unleaded regular), although there is no timetable for this modification.

This weekend, Rockefeller filed federal legislation – The Future Fuel Act – that would put the nation on the path to using clean coal technologies as an alternative source of domestic fuel. It also creates a Future Fuels Corporation, a privately-run, but government-financed massive research facility that brings together the best and brightest scientific experts to accelerate the production and deployment of carbon capture and sequestration technologies. More information about the Future Fuels Act is available from his website.

Rockefeller’s prepared event statement follows:

Anyone who fills up their car each day, turns on the news, or makes a trip to the grocery store knows that our country is in the midst of a full-blown crisis: gas prices are through the roof – and families are being forced to make tough choices, and tough sacrifices every day; we’re bleeding good-paying manufacturing jobs. That pain is all too real here in the Ohio Valley. Workers are losing their health insurance and struggling to take care of their families; dependence on foreign oil is hampering all of us in more ways than one – it's also threatening our national security; and, worries about climate change loom over our heads.

These are serious problems that demand serious answers – not bickering and fighting. Today, West Virginia is offering an historic, and revolutionary, solution.

By building the nation's first-ever modern gasification and CTL plant right here in Benwood, we're saying to the nation and to the world that we're stepping up. We're getting started. We’re creating jobs -- 100 coal and 400 construction jobs -- and developing our most abundant domestic resource -- coal.

I've been saying for years that I'm absolutely confident we can tackle these new technologies – coal-to-liquids and carbon capture and sequestration. We have the manpower, the resources and the know-how to do it.

To help at the federal level, I also have introduced legislation that helps get even more of these projects off the drawing board and into construction. The legislation will create a laser-focused government-private effort to tackle the challenge of carbon capture and sequestration – which is the key to coal’s future, and the key to having a sustainable domestic fuel source for centuries to come.

West Virginia isn't waiting around for someone else to fix the problem. We're poised to be a national leader. We're going to be a global leader. And we're ready to blaze the trail that will put our country on the path to energy security, to greater economic growth – and to a better way of life.

Thank you – and let’s get started.