Recently, executives from DKRW Advanced Fuels have said they plan on visiting officials at the Department of Energy (DOE) in the near future to move along their application for a $1.75 billion loan guarantee that would help them construct a $2 billion coal to liquids (CTL) plant in Medicine Bow, Wyoming. The same executives expressed optimism about the application earlier this spring. Since the plant was proposed in 2004, the company has repeatedly attempted to secure funding for the project from private and public sources alike, including through a separate DOE program, to no avail. Little has changed to make the expensive CTL technology underpinning the plant less risky, or the project more credit-worthy.

 Since 2009, DKRW’s loan guarantee application has been stalled, but to prevent taxpayers from ever bearing the risk for the costly CTL plant’s construction, DOE officials should reject the application outright.

To date, the only significant outside investment in the project was made by Arch Coal, the potential supplier of coal for the plant, but that hasn’t been enough to get the project off the ground. And the lack of interest from investors has forced the company to continuously push back construction of the plant.

Even Arch Coal has indicated that the project’s prospects are dim. The company’s financial statements reveal that DKRW lost approximately $62 million from 2006-2013, and has been unable to repay $44 million that Arch loaned it from 2008-2013. This led Arch to conclude in its 2013 Annual Report that it considered its investment in DKRW unrecoverable.