The
Synthetic Fuels Corporation was a
U.S. government-funded corporation
established in 1980 by the
Synthetic Fuels Corporation Act
to create a market for
synthetic fuel
alternatives to imported
fossil fuels
(such as
coal gasification).
The Great
Plains coal gasification plant in Beulah, ND
, still producing natural gas and sequestering
carbon in 2009 , was built by this corporation, partly as a result
of efforts by Reagan's Energy Secretary James B. Edwards. The corporation was abolished in
1985.
J.J. Dooley, Federal Investments in Energy
R&D: 1961-2008. US Dept. of Energy, October,
2008.
"During the period [1981-1988] federal energy R&D expenditures
fell by more than 50% in real terms."
The original intention of the corporation was to partner with
industry (primarily
oil companies) to
create a market for domestically-produced
synthetic liquid fuels, with a goal of
producing 2 million barrels of liquid fuel per day within five
years. Critics of the Synthetic Fuels Corporation point to its
failure to achieve its goals as a reason to prevent government from
interfering with
free markets. The
purported objective behind the Synthetic Fuels Corporation was to
move research and development of synthetic fuels out of the
Department of
Energy and into a
public-private partnership that
would produce tangible results in a short period of time. Many
believe that the
drop in worldwide oil
prices in the early 1980s played a primary role in obviating
the need for the corporation, at least from a short-term economic
perspective.
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