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New LTV plant in works
Friday, February 20, 1998 By Jim McKay, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
LTV Steel Corp. has promised the United Steelworkers union that it will consider locating a new, environmentally clean coke and energy cogeneration plant in Hazelwood to replace its old complex of coal-burning ovens.
Leo Gerard, the USW's secretary-treasurer, said yesterday that he reached a "gentleman's agreement" this week with LTV Chairman David Hoag that the company and the union would work together on the project.
"It's a massive construction project," Gerard said. "What you need to envision is building a brand new, state-of-the-art, high-tech manufacturing facility. Don't think of it as a coke plant with stacks and chimneys."
A $350 million project with similar technology is currently under construction at Inland Steel's Indiana Harbor Works in East Chicago, Ind.
The new nonrecovery process incinerates hazardous byproducts produced during coking. (Coke is made by baking coal at high temperatures and is used to make iron in blast furnaces.)
W. Michael McCabe, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator whose ruling last Friday on Hazelwood's emissions prompted LTV to begin a plant shutdown, called nonrecovery coke ovens a promising and innovative technology.
"This represents the cleanest available coke oven technology and virtually eliminates hazardous air pollutants," he said. "EPA remains flexible to expedite permitting an environmental assessment at the site."
Philadelhia-based Sun Co.'s Sun Coal and Coke subsidiary is the leading developer of the technology in the United States.
The agreement would seem to end the union's noisy fight with LTV over the company's decision in July to close the 81-year-old Hazelwood coke plant, which employs about 750 and has run afoul of the Clean Air Act.
LTV is currently closing the Hazelwood plant, a process expected to take a few weeks. Workers who do not retire and are displaced by the closing would be given hiring preference at the new facility, Gerard said. More than 100 jobs currently are available for Hazelwood workers at other LTV sites, in Aliquippa, Indiana Harbor and Cleveland.
The new technology requires about one-third as many employees as the old to produce the same amount of coke.
The deal is far from completed or assured. LTV spokesman Mark Tomasch said there was a long list of issues that needed to be addressed, including environmental compliance and financial incentives from local and state government.
"Nothing has been executed," Tomasch said. "This is really at the very beginning of the process."
Gerard and several politicians, including city Councilman Bob O'Connor and state Sen. Ivan Itkin, D-Point Breeze, have suggested that the Ridge administration should put up financial aid for the project because the state recently invested $180 million to redevelop a shipyard in Philadelphia.
Tim Reeves, a spokesman for the governor, said Ridge was "personally involved" in the LTV discussions and was "absolutely prepared to invest funds to save jobs or create jobs. His record shows that."
Tomasch said Pittsburgh had a "lot of potential" for the new plant site. The transportation infrastructure of the old plant could also be used for the new one. There is coal-loading equipment, a river barge docking area and a railroad on the site.
Environmental cleanup expense would be minimized if the facility is built on the site of the old one rather than redeveloped for, say, an office park. Cleanup of contaminated soil and groundwater could wait if LTV builds a new facility on the site, said Charles Duritsa, regional director of the state Department of Environmental Protection.
"If LTV wants to do something, we need to know what kind of contaminants are on the site, but that wouldn't prevent them from building something even before remediation," he said.
"Some areas with less contamination, the company can work on first. Then it can do the tougher areas, around the coke batteries and the by-products plant. As long as it's moving on the cleanups we'll work with it," Duritsa said.
Mayor Murphy's office applauded the announcement and said the city would help the company and the union.
Pittsburgh doesn't have a lock on the plant, and most details -- how big it would be, how much coke it would produce, who would construct the coke and cogeneration facilities, and who would run them are undecided.
In Indiana, Sun Coal and Coke is contributing $185 million and its proprietary technology to the project, which is being built by Raytheon Engineers and Constructors. Fluor Daniel Inc. is building the 87-megawatt co-generation station for Primary Energy Inc., a subsidiary of NIPSCO Industries Inc.
The electricity that the coke complex would produce could be a valuable commodity, because of the deregulation of the power industry. Everyone from billion-dollar utilities to small family-owned firms are jumping into the business of competing to sell power around the country.
"It's a win for Pittsburgh and it's a win for Allegheny County if we can generate low-cost power and attract other industrial manufacturers," Gerard said. "
The coke plant, by using heat from coke production, presumably would produce electricity at a lower cost than an energy company that needs to buy coal or natural gas to fire its boilers.
Who would buy the electricity? That depends. An LTV affiliate, for example, could register with the state as an energy supplier and sell the power directly to retail customers. By 2001, all Pennsylvania customers will be able to choose their power supplier, according to state law.
Or the company might sell the power at discounted rates to industrial customers in Allegheny County as a way to counter Duquesne Light Co.'s high rates and to stimulate economic development.
If LTV or another party were to develop an industrial park in conjunction with the plant, the savings could be even greater if certain regulatory hurdles were overcome.
But Alexander Galactic, a consultant with Strategic Energy Ltd., said the simplest transaction would be for LTV to sell excess power wholesale to a utility company or other energy supplier, such as Enron Corp. of Houston.
That's what LTV does now with the excess power from its small power plant at the present Hazelwood works. "That just goes into the Duquesne Light systems. And for us it's a low-cost energy source," utility company spokeswoman Terri Glueck said. "It's not much in terms of megawatts."
UFrule
Staff writers Don Hopey and Ken Zapinski contributed to this report.
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Hazelwood
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new plant
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ufstaffBy Jim McKay
Post-Gazette Staff Writer
LTV Steel Corp. has promised the United Steelworkers union that it will consider locating a new, environmentally clean coke and energy cogeneration plant in Hazelwood to replace its old complex of coal-burning ovens.
Leo Gerard, the USW's secretary-treasurer, said yesterday that he reached a "gentleman's agreement" this week with LTV Chairman David Hoag that the company and the union would work together on the project.
"It's a massive construction project," Gerard said. "What you need to envision is building a brand new, state-of-the-art, high-tech manufacturing facility. Don't think of it as a coke plant with stacks and chimneys."
A $350 million project with similar technology is currently under construction at Inland Steel's Indiana Harbor Works in East Chicago, Ind.
The new nonrecovery process incinerates hazardous byproducts produced during coking. (Coke is made by baking coal at high temperatures and is used to make iron in blast furnaces.)
W. Michael McCabe, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator whose ruling last Friday on Hazelwood's emissions prompted LTV to begin a plant shutdown, called nonrecovery coke ovens a promising and innovative technology.
"This represents the cleanest available coke oven technology and virtually eliminates hazardous air pollutants," he said. "EPA remains flexible to expedite permitting an environmental assessment at the site."
Philadelhia-based Sun Co.'s Sun Coal and Coke subsidiary is the leading developer of the technology in the United States.
The agreement would seem to end the union's noisy fight with LTV over the company's decision in July to close the 81-year-old Hazelwood coke plant, which employs about 750 and has run afoul of the Clean Air Act.
LTV is currently closing the Hazelwood plant, a process expected to take a few weeks. Workers who do not retire and are displaced by the closing would be given hiring preference at the new facility, Gerard said. More than 100 jobs currently are available for Hazelwood workers at other LTV sites, in Aliquippa, Indiana Harbor and Cleveland.
The new technology requires about one-third as many employees as the old to produce the same amount of coke.
The deal is far from completed or assured. LTV spokesman Mark Tomasch said there was a long list of issues that needed to be addressed, including environmental compliance and financial incentives from local and state government.
"Nothing has been executed," Tomasch said. "This is really at the very beginning of the process."
Gerard and several politicians, including city Councilman Bob O'Connor and state Sen. Ivan Itkin, D-Point Breeze, have suggested that the Ridge administration should put up financial aid for the project because the state recently invested $180 million to redevelop a shipyard in Philadelphia.
Tim Reeves, a spokesman for the governor, said Ridge was "personally involved" in the LTV discussions and was "absolutely prepared to invest funds to save jobs or create jobs. His record shows that."
Tomasch said Pittsburgh had a "lot of potential" for the new plant site. The transportation infrastructure of the old plant could also be used for the new one. There is coal-loading equipment, a river barge docking area and a railroad on the site.
Environmental cleanup expense would be minimized if the facility is built on the site of the old one rather than redeveloped for, say, an office park. Cleanup of contaminated soil and groundwater could wait if LTV builds a new facility on the site, said Charles Duritsa, regional director of the state Department of Environmental Protection.
"If LTV wants to do something, we need to know what kind of contaminants are on the site, but that wouldn't prevent them from building something even before remediation," he said.
"Some areas with less contamination, the company can work on first. Then it can do the tougher areas, around the coke batteries and the by-products plant. As long as it's moving on the cleanups we'll work with it," Duritsa said.
Mayor Murphy's office applauded the announcement and said the city would help the company and the union.
Pittsburgh doesn't have a lock on the plant, and most details -- how big it would be, how much coke it would produce, who would construct the coke and cogeneration facilities, and who would run them are undecided.
In Indiana, Sun Coal and Coke is contributing $185 million and its proprietary technology to the project, which is being built by Raytheon Engineers and Constructors. Fluor Daniel Inc. is building the 87-megawatt co-generation station for Primary Energy Inc., a subsidiary of NIPSCO Industries Inc.
The electricity that the coke complex would produce could be a valuable commodity, because of the deregulation of the power industry. Everyone from billion-dollar utilities to small family-owned firms are jumping into the business of competing to sell power around the country.
"It's a win for Pittsburgh and it's a win for Allegheny County if we can generate low-cost power and attract other industrial manufacturers," Gerard said. "
The coke plant, by using heat from coke production, presumably would produce electricity at a lower cost than an energy company that needs to buy coal or natural gas to fire its boilers.
Who would buy the electricity? That depends. An LTV affiliate, for example, could register with the state as an energy supplier and sell the power directly to retail customers. By 2001, all Pennsylvania customers will be able to choose their power supplier, according to state law.
Or the company might sell the power at discounted rates to industrial customers in Allegheny County as a way to counter Duquesne Light Co.'s high rates and to stimulate economic development.
If LTV or another party were to develop an industrial park in conjunction with the plant, the savings could be even greater if certain regulatory hurdles were overcome.
But Alexander Galactic, a consultant with Strategic Energy Ltd., said the simplest transaction would be for LTV to sell excess power wholesale to a utility company or other energy supplier, such as Enron Corp. of Houston.
That's what LTV does now with the excess power from its small power plant at the present Hazelwood works. "That just goes into the Duquesne Light systems. And for us it's a low-cost energy source," utility company spokeswoman Terri Glueck said. "It's not much in terms of megawatts."
Staff writers Don Hopey and Ken Zapinski contributed to this report.
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