[TheRealThing]

If you will notice, at Catlettsburg, KY., heading east toward WV on I-64 at the Marathon plant, everything to your left while traveling between the plant is one of those coal to gas plants. It was finished in the early 80's. It was a government funded project, and after they fired it up and knew that it worked, the government shut it down. I don't know if it was a Reagan shut down or not, but it was during his Presidency, and has never ran after the initial fire up.

I helped build that one. It was brought about intially by the Carter administration. Remember the onset of long lines of cars waiting to by gas in the 70s? Those days marked the first time gas went above a dollar a gallon. That's why the Carter administration decided to improve on an idea first implimented in Germany during the 2nd World War.

At some point after the initial gas scare subsided, but following the plans and allocation of government funding for construction and fire-up, the plant was moth-balled and canabalized for various reasons in the days since. It worked, albeit not so economically, though I've heard they learned enough from the experience to build a facillity which would be much more efficient.