Development continues on a coal-to-liquids plant proposed for Mingo County in spite of tough financial market conditions that stopped a Marshall County plant last month.

"We love the site, we love the local support," said Tom Sayles, senior vice president of corporate communications for project developer Rentech Inc. "From a corporate perspective, we continue to be excited."

Rentech plans for its Mingo County coal-to-liquids project to convert a combination of waste coal and waste biomass to ammonia and liquid transportation fuels.

The project is in the early engineering phase, according to Randall Harris, director of project development for the Mingo County Redevelopment Authority.

Marshall County CTL developers CONSOL Energy and Synthesis Energy Systems announced on Oct. 23 that they would stop funding their plant's front-end engineering design package because of the "difficult financial environment."

But financing is not hurting the Rentech plant at its current stage of development, Harris said.

"We've been financing the engineering phase, and we don't have any problem on that yet," he said.

In fact, Harris, who spoke with The State Journal from a two-day "Enabling Global Coal-to-Liquids Markets" conference in Houston, was encouraged by the banks in attendance at the conference.

"(The CTL developers are) all getting 'pinged' by people that used to be tier two ,tier three financial institutions but are now tier one because the tier ones went away," he said.

"The key issue has always been, can you bring a project forward that has good feedstock supply and good off-take and that your black box on whatever you're making can get you at least a 20 percent return on investment?" he continued. "If so, there's never been a question of financing, and it appears there's still not a question."

The Mingo County facility will be engineered to create a product mix of specialty chemicals and commodity fuels that is expected to maximize return, Harris said.

Rentech is planning to ramp up production in two phases.

A first phase would produce 3,000 barrels of liquid transportation fuels per day; a second would produce 30,000 barrels per day.

The developers will begin seeking permits and financing about halfway through the engineering phase, Harris said. Although he did not give a timeline for that milestone, he did say that a 2012 timeline is still in place for getting the facility online.