Going deep: Alaska's coal gasification pioneers.

• Author: Hollander, Zaz
• Position: ENERGY

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Far below the muskegs of western Cook Inlet, rich coal seams lurk deep below the ground--stranded far beyond the reach of conventional mining techniques.

Enter CIRI and Linc Energy (Alaska) Inc., two companies pioneering the first forays into the possibility of underground coal gasification production in Alaska.

CIRI hopes to develop an underground coal gasification project on its own lands northeast of the Beluga River. Linc Energy currently holds exploration licenses on Alaska Mental Health Trust lands four miles due west of Beluga.

The process works like this: Compressed air pumped through a well into a coal seam triggers the underground combustion of some of the coal. The resulting heat converts the air, coal, and coal seam water into carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and methane, along with some contaminants including sulfur oxide and hydrogen sulfide.

The products of underground coal gasification--UCG in short--are brought up with fairly standard production wells without the disruption of traditional mining methods, backers say. The gases produced can be converted to methane, the chief component of natural gas, for general utility uses or used directly to fuel power generation. A gas-to-liquids plant can also convert the primary synthesis gas or "syngas" into diesel, jet fuel, or fertilizers.

UCG is already in production around the world--Uzbekistan, South Africa, Australia--and there are additional UCG projects at various stages of development elsewhere.

Its claim to fame: the process allows producers to plumb coal seams too costly or technically challenging to mine.

Some western Cook Inlet coal seams, thousands of feet deep, definitely fit that category.

"If you can reach those and turn them into a valuable energy commodity like syngas, then it brings a resource that's probably of marginal value to the Trust to having a great value to the Trust and to those of us who consume gas in Alaska," says Rick Fredericksen, the Trust's senior resource manager for energy and minerals.

Stone Horn Rises

Given predicted shortages in Cook Inlet natural gas, CIRI is hoping to bring a new source of heat and power to South-central homes and businesses.

CIRI has already spent more than $10 million on its UCG development on corporation lands in the Stone Horn Ridge area six or seven miles from the Beluga airstrip and power plant.

But back in 2008 or 2009, when the Alaska Native Corporation started getting cold calls from UCG proponents, the industry was not a familiar one.

"I'd never heard of the technology," says Ethan Schutt...