Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 19:16:01 GMT Server: NCSA/1.5.2 Last-modified: Fri, 07 Mar 1997 23:12:36 GMT Content-type: text/html Content-length: 4844
JANUARY 10,1997
Zeigler Coal Holding Company subsidiaries announce
signing of contract for construction of LFC plant;
increased environmental benefits indicated
[The following release contains forward-looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties inherent in the company's business. The company's actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in those forward-looking statements as a result of certain factors, including those set forth in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, within the company's Forms 10-K and 10-Q.]
ENCOAL Corporation and Americoal Development company, subsidiaries of Zeigler Coal Holding Company (NYSE: ZEI), today announced that their newly formed company - NuCoal, LLC - has signed contracts with Mitsubishi International Corporation for construction of a full-scale Liquids From Coal (LFC) plant in Wyoming. Completion of the facility is subject to certain conditions including obtaining construction and permanent financing and all necessary permits.
The new agreements call for the engineering, procurement and construction of a three module LFC processing facility capable of processing six million tons of coal feedstock per year. The contract cost of the LFC plant will be approximately $460 million.
The LFC technology is owned and licensed by TEK-KOL, a partnership of a Zeigler subsidiary and SGI International, the inventor of the technology. Mitsibushi and TEK-KOL have for the past year been engaged in advanced feasibility studies regarding the prospective joint engineering and construction of commercial LFC plants, including this plant and potential projects in Indonesia and Russia. The LFC technology converts low-rank coals into the following two products:
Jim Mahler, ENCOAL executive and President of Zeigler's Americoal Development Company, said in announcing the construction agreements that recent testing of ENCOAL's solid fuel product resulted in a greater than 15% reduction of nitrous oxide emissions, or NOx. "The 'EN' in ENCOAL stands for 'environment,'" said Mahler. "And recent test burns indicate that the products produced by ENCOAL are even kinder to the environment than we previously believed."
He said that power plant testing of PDF had demonstrated five primary environmental benefits that indicate that it is superior to its feedstock-coal counterpart which is already low in sulfur:
Zeigler coal annually fuels more than 50 billion kilowatt hours of power in the United States, or nearly 2 percent of all domestic electricity. The Zeigler family of companies is among the largest coal producers and marketers in the United States, and controls more than 1.3 billion tons of economically recoverable coal reserves, including 1 billion tons of low sulfur coal. Zeigler subsidiaries currently operate underground and surface coal mining complexes in Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and Wyoming, which mine primarily steam coal for electricity generation. Zeigler subsidiaries also operate two East Coast import/export terminals and the ENCOAL clean coal technology demonstration plant. A Zeigler affiliate has a joint bid with Southern Electric International and NRG Energy pending to purchase out of bankruptcy the non-nuclear assets of Louisiana-based Cajun Electric Power Cooperative. And EnerZ Corporation, an energy trading and marketing firm, has been created to take advantage of opportunities growing out of utility deregulation.
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