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ODC to look at Summit project
Odessa American - January 8, 2010

ODC to look at Summit project

BY GEOFF FOLSOM

2010-01-08 19:19:17

It’s not important to Tom Barker that the Ector County Appraisal District lists the value of his 600 acres in Penwell at $48,000.

“It’s a choice piece of property,” the local bail bondsman said. “Probably the choicest piece of property in Ector County.”

And that’s why Barker was able to get an agreement for top dollar to sell the land, which will be given to Bainbridge Island, Wash.-based Summit Power Group Inc. as the site of its $1.7 billion coal gasification plant.

If Summit doesn’t want the land, Barker figures someone else will want it.

“There’s no question,” he said. “People have been looking at that land for a long time.”

Neither Barker nor Gary Vest, economic development director for the Odessa Chamber of Commerce, would disclose the price. But it’s safe to assume that it’s more than $375,000. That’s what Barker had been asking for in the year leading up to Summit announcing it was going forward with building the plant in the wake of receiving a $350 million Clean Coal Power Initiative grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

The vote on Barker’s land is one of two related to the Texas Clean Energy Project that’s expected in the coming weeks by the Odessa Development Corp. The other will deal with an economic development agreement that is expected to pay Summit $5 million in exchange for keeping at least 1,000 construction workers employed for at least three years, along with 150 permanent employees.

Vest is expected to address ODC board members on the agreement during closed session at their Thursday meeting. He said votes should take place at a special meeting a week or two later.

“We’ll be working all that out over the next week or so,” he said. “I’m very optimistic about this thing.”

Vest said the deal with Barker is still being reviewed by the landowner’s attorney.

ODC board member Tom McMinn said he will likely vote in favor of the Summit items.

“I think it’s going to be a very good thing for the community, and I think we’re going to get some jobs out of it,” he said.

The 400-megawatt Summit project is designed to keep 90 percent of the carbon dioxide it produces from escaping into the atmosphere through integrated carbon capture. The CO2 will then be sold for sequestration in advanced oil recovery in the Permian Basin.

McMinn said he feels more positively about the Summit project than he did FutureGen, a proposed government-backed low emissions coal power plant proposed for Barker’s same Penwell property. After a more than three-year effort, the Permian Basin lost out on to a Mattoon, Ill., site in December 2007.

“As opposed to FutureGen, it just being an experimental plant, this is actually a functioning power plant,” McMinn said. “It’s better for our economy and not something that might not be here tomorrow.”

Hoxie Smith, the director of Midland College’s Petroleum Professional Development Center who helped lead the area’s FutureGen effort, said the incentives ODC will give Summit will benefit the community.

“It’s not something that happens very fast, but it’s something that will benefit the whole area,” he said.

He credits the economic development department for sticking with the project.

“It took a combined effort of the community, the elected leaders and a good company like Summit with a forward-thinking vision,” he said.