The news that former President Jimmy Carter has died got me thinking about his term in office (1976-1980) and his connections to West Virginia.
Carter left office with only a 34 percent approval rating, but he was supported by a majority of West Virginians. West Virginia was one of just six states (West Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Hawaii) that voted for Carter in his 1980 re-election bid.
Republican Ronald Reagan won 44 states in a landslide nationally, but Carter carried West Virginia by 50 percent to 45 percent. Four years earlier, West Virginia was among the 23 states that propelled Carter to a narrow victory over Gerald Ford.
One of Carter’s main focuses as president was energy policy. The country was still in shock over the Arab Oil Embargo and Carter pledged to reduce the nation’s appetite for oil, but also to expand domestic energy production, including non-traditional uses for coal.
Carter brought his campaign for a national energy policy to West Virginia. On March 17, 1977, he appeared with then-Governor Jay Rockefeller at a “West Virginia Energy/Environment Round Table” in Charleston.
But despite his best efforts, the proposal failed to make it through Congress.
Congressional Quarterly described Carter’s plan as “an exceedingly complex package of regulatory and tax measures.” House Speaker Tip O’Neill pushed the plan through the House, but it failed in the Senate, collapsing under the weight of its own expansive goals and regulatory requirements.
In 1978, Carter came back to West Virginia and announced the creation of the President’s Commission on the Coal industry. “West Virginia alone could supply all the needs for our entire country for more than a generation,” Carter said.
“The nation will need synthetics from coal to meet our future energy needs,” Carter said, “and West Virginia will play an important part in supplying both the coal and the technology to make this hope and expectation a reality.”
Carter kept up his support for elements of his plan throughout his presidency, and in 1979 Congress approved legislation creating the Synthetic Fuels Corporation. It allocated $20 billion for development and construction of refineries to make oil substitutes from coal, gas and shale.
Senator Robert Byrd, then the Majority Leader, called the bill “insurance against future OPEC price increases” and protection against “dangerous dependence on foreign oil.” The funding came from a windfall profits tax on oil companies.
Gulf Oil attempted to take advantage of the funding with a proposed pilot coal liquefaction plant near Morgantown. A UPI report said the “coal-to oil project proposed by the Carter administration envisaged the development of methods for processing 6,000 tons of coal per day into 20,000 barrels of oil and gas.”
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But it never happened.
Carter lost the 1980 election to Reagan, who viewed the Synthetic Fuels Corporation as an example of government waste. The Corporation was abolished in 1986. In addition, the price of oil dropped because of a production glut and the development of other major non-OPEC oilfields, which eased fears of another embargo.
The process of turning coal into a liquid fuel has been around for over 100 years. Germany used it extensively during WWII. However, it is highly unlikely that it will ever be a viable alternative. It is expensive to produce and the green movement wants to keep coal in the ground.
However, once upon a time, a man from Plains, Georgia thought that West Virginia coal should be part of the solution to the nation’s energy needs. And he was the last Democratic President to believe that.