Coal to Diesel Conversion plant could have huge
impact
The Glasgow Daily Times ^ | June 12, 2008 | Ronnie Ellis
Hallelujah!!! This would be wonderful!!!
Posted on Thursday,
June 12, 2008 11:39:21 AM
Bunning, during a conference call Tuesday with
Bunning said if the facility clears permitting
hurdles, he will push federal legislation to provide incentives such as
accelerated depreciation to help it get going.
“Large sums
of money are available if in fact a private sector company comes to the federal
government with a plan,” Bunning said. He has supported federal subsidies and
incentives for coal-to-liquid conversion and he sees it as part of an overall
plan for
“All I can tell you is they’ve been in my office
telling me what they need, and I told them to go get ’em,”
Bunning said. He said the plan calls for capturing up to 94 percent of the
carbon emissions at the plant, which he called “unbelievable.”
Bunning said the
“Get it through your head that if we put a
so-called windfall profits tax on oil, we will have less oil and less gasoline
and therefore the price will go up and not down,” Bunning said. He said there
is “zero” chance such a bill will pass the current Congress because Republicans
in the Senate can muster 41 votes for filibustering such a measure.
He said right now OPEC nations set the price of
oil because they control 92 percent of the world’s oil supply. But he thinks
prices at the pump will eventually come back down, perhaps to the $2.50 range,
although it will “take a long time until we get our domestic production back up
to speed.” Many analysts say higher gas prices are likely to be permanent.
Bunning said he’s concerned about the economy, a
rise in the unemployment rate and failure of investment banking firms. “The
economy over the next three to five months is going to be bad,” he said.
But he thinks presumptive Republican presidential
nominee Sen. John McCain of
McCain’s likely Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, often
says McCain is running for a third Bush term and calls for the end of Bush tax
cuts to wealthy tax payers. McCain once opposed those cuts but now supports
them.
“The worst thing you can do in a bad economy is to
raise taxes,” Bunning said. “And that is what Barack Obama is planning to do.”