On the verge of Southcentral running out of natural gas in Cook Inlet, one Alaska Native corporation presented a plan October 9th that could help offset Southcentral's crisis and dependence on the main way it gets energy.

Cook Inlet Region Inc. (CIRI) delivered the news on building a 100-megawatt underground coal gasification plant. "We have been quietly investigating this project and this technology that underpins this project for a year," said Margie Brown, CIRI's CEO. Brown said action had to be taken in addressing the Railbelt's dwindling supply of Cook Inlet's natural gas.

CIRI rolled out a plan, which would use the resources buried under the land it owns, on the west side of Cook Inlet, near Beluga. "We literally have hundreds and thousands of acres and most, if not all of those acres are underlined by valuable coal resource," said Ethan Schutt, project manager and senior vice president at CIRI.

The west side of Cook Inlet is where CIRI plans to build the underground coal gasification plant (UCG). "We believe that UCG is a unique technology that addresses both the economic and environmental concern of development," said Schutt.

Most coal that is burned for power production in the country requires a mine and above ground gasification that produce waste, called tailings, that could be harmful to the environment. CIRI says its proposal is cleaner. Instead, it will drill wells 650 feet into the ground and use the earth as its

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gasification chamber, converting the energy from coal to syngas. "The syngas is extracted above ground and that is used as your fuel stock in order to power your generators to produce power," said Brown.

Some lawmakers are optimistic about the plan, especially with no cost to the state

"This is a $100 million project and CIRI has already obtained the finances. That's what really makes it unique because they are building it themselves and operating the power plant and dong it in such small chunks, it's absolutely feasible," said Sen. Lesil McGuire, R- Anchorage.

"I think for a long time, coal has had a bad reputation but this is an exciting project. Finally, technology has caught up where we think we can do this project with this environmentally friendly, sensitive to fisheries, sensitive to the land and sensitive to the air," said Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D- Anchorage.

This technology is not exactly new; it has been used in Australia and South Africa but not in North America. CIRI says this new technology could be a game changer for the rest of the state.

However, as with most natural resource development projects in Alaska, it will need to go through the environmental impact process, meaning permits.

"We don't want permits to be so burdensome that makes projects like this impossible," said Wielechowski, "But at the same time, we do have to keep protecting Alaska to make sure we have a process in place that protects our environment and protects Alaskans."

Other lawmakers say if done right, this could help communities outside the Railbelt.

"It looks like you can get down as low as 50- megawatts of transmission and if that is the case; rural Alaska would be transformed from this kind of technology. We have coal seams throughout the state and so we intend to look into the scalability of this kind of technology," said McGuire.

CIRI plans to start resource drilling in December 2009 and it plans to have the entire plan up and running by January 2014.

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