Owners of the endangered Pleasants Power Station have signed a purchase agreement to turn the plant over to Omnis Fuel Technologies, according to a county commissioner who has been at the center of talks.
“This signing is undoubtedly our biggest victory thus far,” said Pleasants County Commissioner Jay Powell.
Formal closure of the deal is expected within a few weeks, and at that point a sale price and other details could be available. The transfer also calls for approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Pleasants is a 1300 megawatt two-unit coal power plant located on the Ohio River near Belmont, Pleasants County. About 150 people work at the plant, which began operations in 1979.
Until late last year, it had been owned by Energy Harbor, which is pursuing a green energy strategy and transferred control of the plant to another company called Energy Transmission & Environmental Management.
ETEM had intended to shut down the plant, demolish the structures, remediate the property and prepare it for future redevelopment.
Now the plant’s life appears on the verge of being extended.
“You know, we certainly can’t cut the ribbon yet, but this was a gigantic milestone to get over,” Powell said.
Omnis has been in talks in recent months to take over the plant and generate energy using a hydrogen by product of Omnis’s graphite production operations.
Omnis is developing technologies that could be subject to benefits under the federal Inflation Reduction Act, like hydrogen and carbon sequestration.
“Initially, it would be run as it has in the past, as a coal-fired power plant. But their aspiration is to retrofit it and run it with hydrogen, sooner than later,” Powell said on MetroNews’ “Talkline.”
Omnis signed a letter of intent in early June, and just before that the plant’s status was formally changed from being “retired” to, instead, “mothballed.”
“They’re doing almost like an internal shutdown, meaning those those workers they’re getting the plant ready to run,” Powell said. “They have workers there around the clock, getting things ready, getting the mechanics ready to get everything up to speed, so that when a new owner takes ownership off the plant that they’re ready to go as quickly as possible.”
The plant could fire back up in August, Powell said.
“Think about that. It was slated to be scrapped. Taken out on barges,” Powell said. “Now we may operate in a revolutionary way in the next 18 to 24 months.”
Before the Omnis possibility emerged, two subsidiaries of FirstEnergy power company were examining whether taking over Pleasants Power Station would make sense. The two power companies started an assessment under the guidance of the Public Service Commission.
The power companies, in a filing this spring, alluded to the possibility of yet another company potentially taking over the property, raising the possibility that their evaluation could be cut short if the deal with Omnis would solidify.
The two companies had sought a surcharge of at least $36 million to keep the plant operational while they studied whether taking it over would make sense.
When Omnis entered the picture, organizations like the West Virginia Energy Users Group pushed back on whether the surcharge would be necessary at all.
“It would be inappropriate for the Companies — and their ratepayers — to subsidize the costs to maintain Pleasants during this timeframe when a private third-party is contemplating the purchase of Pleasants for purposes of producing energy,” Carrie Grundman, an attorney representing the West Virginia Energy Users Group wrote in a filing earlier this year.
The examination of a potential transfer to the Monongalia Power subsidiaries remains open with the PSC, but it could be formally closed if the sale to Omnis goes through.