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June 28, 2007
- BP and Ergo Exergy sign Technical Alliance agreement on Underground Coal
Gasification (press release)
BP
International and Ergo Exergy Technologies, Inc. today
announced that they have signed a technical alliance agreement
to work cooperatively on underground coal gasification (UCG)
technology – the in-situ conversion of coal deposits into
fuels and other products.
UCG offers the potential to produce fuels and hydrocarbon
feedstock from coal deposits which may otherwise be
unrecoverable. By introducing a carefully controlled supply of
air or oxygen through wells into a coal seam, the coal can be
reacted in situ to produce mixtures of hydrogen, carbon
monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane and other gases. These can
be recovered to the surface through wells and used as fuel for
power generation or as feedstock for the production of
chemicals and other hydrocarbon products.
Ergo Exergy have world-leading experience in the development
of UCG technology and are active in licensing their
εUCG™
technology to commercial UCG projects. Founded over 15
years ago, their expertise and technology has been used in the
two most successful UCG projects in recent years: the latest,
in South Africa.
BP has long experience and extensive activities managing and
producing coal bed methane and other gas resources, using
world-leading technologies and expertise in seismic
interpretation, directional drilling and fracturing
techniques. In addition to the company’s global reach, BP has
extensive major project management experience.

June
22, 2007 - Second International Underground Coal Gasification Workshop
held in Houston, TX, USA.
The second
Workshop on the global commercial applications of
UCG hosted by Zeus
Development Corporation of Texas, USA brought together participants
from 12 countries representing 42 companies including the
largest international corporations from oil and gas, coal,
chemical and power industries as well as environmental,
government, financial, academic and research organizations.
There were reports with updates on the commercial
projects based on the εUCG™
technology - from Canada, US, South Africa, India, Australia and New Zealand,
presented by Laurus Energy (Canada), GasTech (USA), Eskom (South
Africa), Cougar Energy (Australia), and AE Coal Technologies (India) and
Ergo Exergy. Two papers from Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory (USA) reported on the document "The best practices of
Underground Coal Gasification" prepared for the US Department
of Energy, discussed the LLNL program of research in UCG and
focused on the issues of CO2 capture
and sequestration in UCG operations. Papers from UCG group in University of
Queensland (Australia) concerned UCG research conducted in the
university targeting modeling of UCG unit operations and
experimental studies of coal properties that are relevant to
UCG.
A technical panel discussions of various technical and
environmental aspects of UCG gave the audience an opportunity
to get answers to their specific UCG questions and concerns.
The Workshop was concluded by an inaugurational meeting of the
International UCG Association.
Following the Workshop, the licensees and clients of Ergo
Exergy held the meeting of "The εUCG™
technology Users' Group". The Users' Group assists its members in sharing
experiences and practices of implementing the εUCG™
technology in various geological and market situations around the globe.

June
19, 2007 - Majuba UCG Project is moving towards developing a pioneering
2,100 MW IGCC plant
The
Majuba UCG Project reaches 4000 hours of continuous gas production. The
project is based on εUCG™
technology and is developed by Eskom Holdings Limited and Ergo Exergy in South
Africa. Developed in challenging geological conditions, the
project is expanding to reach an unprecedented scale.
Eskom Holdings
announces today that the project is planned to develop
into a 2,100 MW IGCC power plant based on expansion of the
existing UCG plant currently operating at Majuba, in the South
African province of Mpumalanga.

January 20, 2007
- First Underground Coal
Gasification
Plant in Africa - in Operation!
Mpumalanga, South
Africa, 10:50 p.m. (GMT
20:50), Saturday, January 20, 2007: The first Underground Coal
Gasification plant in
the African continent successfully starts operations. The
Majuba UCG Project, located in Mpumalanga, South Africa, is
producing high quality syngas to be used for power generation in the
existing 4.2 GW power plant. The project, based on Ergo Exergy's
proprietary εUCG™
technology , is developed by Eskom
Holdings Ltd.
The Majuba UCG Project is unprecedented in its scale, geological
complexity, and pioneering nature. We are proud to know that the
only two
Underground Coal Gasification operations developed in the world in the
last 18 years have been
based on Ergo Exergy's technology and hard work.
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