Officials: Summit on track

The first of up to 2,000 local workers could have a happy Thanksgiving this year if the construction of a $2 billion coal plant stays on schedule.

Top Summit Power Group executives met with Department of Energy engineers in Odessa last week to update them on progress the company is making toward breaking ground this year. Company executives and DOE officials haven’t met in Odessa since May 2010.

Laura Miller, director of projects for Texas, said the company’s briefing to six engineers from the National Energy Technology Laboratory will confirm that the project is on track. NETL is part of the DOE national laboratory system. They focus on energy and environmental research and development.

The 400-megawatt plant is designed to capture 90 percent of the carbon dioxide it produces. Summit plans to sell the CO2 as enhanced oil recovery, which will help companies bring oil out of the ground. The plant will also produce and sell electricity and fertilizer.

One of the last major obstacles to breaking ground was cleared in late December 2010 when the state granted the project an air permit. The project is still undergoing a federal environmental assessment and an engineering and design review that will confirm the total cost.

A few hurdles remain before starting construction. Company officials are still working to nail down much of the funding. Summit received $450 million from DOE and more than $5 million from the city and the Odessa Development Corporation. ODC is tasked with luring new businesses and growth to the area. Board members are appointed by the City Council and funded by a quarter-cent sales tax.

Summit executives are in talks with banks as well as private equity investors, Miller said. All contracts must be finalized and signed around September so the company can start construction before Thanksgiving.

“It’s January so we are on the clock,” Miller said.

Chris Kirksey, director of projects said he’s while he’s confident that the funding will come through, “it’s very hard to relax.”

Miller said she is sure they will get the funding.

“We’re negotiating with a number of suitors,” Miller said. “We feel confident that because of where the project is and what these investors are telling us, we will not have a problem funding this project.”

Ector County Commissioners have approved spending about $400,000 for a road that will connect Farm Road 866 to the site.

Talks are also under way to get the funds to build the main entrance to the plant. Drew Crutcher, interim economic development director for the Odessa Chamber of Commerce, said he had a meeting with Texas Department of Transportation officials during a trip to Austin last week. The talks went well, he said, and he’s hopeful that the agency will be able to use discretionary funds to build an entrance to the Summit site in Penwell.

“I’m very confident they will fund it,” he said.

Negotiations are also under way to find the necessary water the plant will need to operate. Miller said that while the plant will use a great deal of water, the project has already been redesigned to use less.

For example, she said, the plant will use fans to air-cool the equipment rather than water. This will save a third of the water they originally needed. The plant is also designed to be a zero leakage discharge plant, which means they plan to remove solid waste from the water on-site and then reuse the water.

The company is also negotiating with Midland and Odessa to purchase effluent, that is, wastewater, for the plant. Miller said they would prefer to buy from Odessa so that the water pipe to Odessa could be shorter and less expensive than to build the pipe 37 miles to Midland. Summit will pay to purchase the water and build the pipe.

While company executives are working to bring in more investment and find water, Odessans and other nearby residents are impatiently waiting for the jobs to come.

Miller said it’s too early to begin hiring. She recently redesigned the Texas Clean Energy Project website and it has a link for people interested in working on the project to submit information.

She said hiring will probably begin in late summer or early fall. The company said it expects to hire about between 1,500 to 2,000 local construction workers to build the plant, which is expected to take about three years.

“A lot of those workers are going to be spending money here,” Crutcher said. “A tremendously positive impact on our local community. One we’re really excited about seeing.”