We’ve heard about the technology for decades, and periodically politicians and industry leaders will declare with much fanfare that one of these refineries is going to be built.

But none has, at least not in West Virginia.

Last July, Consolidation Coal and Houston-based Synthesis Energy Systems announced plans for coal-to-liquid plant near Wheeling.   The $800 million investment would generate 300 to 500 construction jobs and 60 full time jobs.

More importantly, the plant would begin the long process of lessening the country’s dependence on foreign oil.

But then, SES pulled out citing the problems in the credit market.

Consol insists it still wants to build the plant.  Gov. Manchin says he has personal assurances from Consol President and CEO Brett Harvey that his company remains committed to the refinery.

Now, the New York-based company, TransGas Development Systems, has announced plans for an even bigger alternative fuels plant in Mingo County.  TransGas President Adam Victor says his company will invest $3 billion in the facility that will turn coal into oil, generating 6.5 million gallons of gas a year.

Victor says he’ll need 3,000 people to build the plant and another 200 to work there fulltime when it’s finished in 2013.

Victor told me during an interview on Metronews Talkline that after running into environmental and permitting opposition in New York, he was ready to go overseas.  But then a common acquaintance—AIG senior vice president for global finance Robert Percopo--brought Victor and Manchin together.

Manchin tells me that Victor, apparently soured by his experiences in other locations, simply wanted “fairness” in the permitting process.  The governor says promises that, telling him, “If you don’t have a good comfort level, let me know.”

Victor is apparently satisfied enough so far to make the big announcement.  “These…projects are going to happen,” Victor told me, “and hopefully they are going to happen in the United States.”

TransGas made a similar significant announcement in Upstate New York recently.  In June, 2007, TransGas said it would build one of the largest and cleanest coal gasification plants in the world near Oswego.

However, that project has run up against a series of objections from locals and environmentalists who fear pollution from the refinery. 

The plans, promises and arguments are not new.  The potential of alternative fuels from coal has been known since WW II when the Germans ran their tanks and planes oil made from coal.

Sixty five years ago last month, Jennings Randolph, the late U.S. Senator from West Virginia and long-time advocate of alternative fuels, flew from Morgantown to Washington, D.C. in a synthetic fuel powered airplane to try to prove a point.

But neither theatre nor our growing and dangerous dependence on foreign oil has led to a commercial coal-to-liquid plant in West Virginia, the state often called the “Saudi Arabia of Coal.” 

So, you can understand my skepticism. 

Victor told me hopes I’ll join him in Mingo County for the ground breaking which he expects within a year.  I’d like that, and I hope for the sake of his business, our state and the country that he can make it happen.

But if it doesn’t, will anybody be surprised?