moving the goalposts, page-4

Thanks for the links to the Advice Statement. I hadn’t read that before but taking a look now I see the title is “UGC/CTL and Power Generation” but the contents are completely proposing CTL. There’s the incidental power export of any small surplus you mention and “The resulting gas, called Syngas, will initially be used as feedstock for a CTL processing plant to produce diesel and jet fuels. There is possibility of expansion to also use the gas in a power generation turbine to generate electricity.”

These are the project objectives:
* Establish and operate a sustainable and profitable UCG and CTL operation to enhance commercial opportunities for ultra clean diesel and aviation fuels;
* construct and operate a UCG and CTL operation that minimises adverse impacts on the surrounding bio-physical and social environments;
* construct and operate a UCG and CTL operation that complies with all relevant statutory obligations and continues to improve processes which enhance best practice environmental management;
* construct, design and operate a UCG /CTL operation and generate sufficient energy from the UCG process to meet all the energy needs of the CLT plant; and
* construct, design and operate a UCG and CTL operation successfully, which allows for future expansion that does not compromise environmental and social indicators and standards

Electricity export is not amongst them.

I can see the perspective that Linc are just altering the build schedule to generate cashflow ASAP. But I also see another possibility that I find rather more plausible. The key question is – are they raising ALL the project finance in one go?

I suspect not – I think we now have two proposed projects.
Project A : Build a (perhaps) 200MW power plant and export the electricity.
Project B : Build a CTL plant which will use some of the power from A.

Project A is a goer on a far tighter timescale than the former plan of A+B. And what’s the betting that financing Project B gets no further than feasibility study (inc demo plant) before project A’s generating cashflow?

I tell you what would really make me laugh though. If project A was initially 40MW open cycle – minimising the capex but just enough to be viable stand-alone whilst proving the concept so as to persuade a neighbouring utility to build the generation while Linc concentrate on their key intended competence – producing the syngas!