Not that this is really news, DKRW's project to build a plant in Carbon County had been in trouble for quite some time. The economics of it, however, just weren't working out.
That coal can be a starting point for the processing of gasoline, jet fuel and diesel fuel, is hardly news of any kind. It's been well known for a long time. As is often pointed out in the discussion of this topic, the Germans relied extensively on synthetic, i.e., coal based, fuels during World War Two. And they aren't the only ones to have relied upon it at one point or another either. South Africa, in its later embargoed period, and Rhodesia (from South Africa) relied upon synthetic fuel well after the Germans had. But that should say something about the economics of it. The Germans relied upon it as they had to. Outside of Romania and southern Russia, they had no other petroleum fuel sources and couldn't import anything. Likewise, South Africa and Rhodesia, by the 1970s, were in the same situation. In other words, economically, converting coal into motor fuel has tended to only make sense if petroleum was basically unavailable. It has always been cheaper to simply start with petroleum oil, which of course is well on its way to being gasoline, diesel fuel, or jet fuel. Indeed, in rare instances, such as in Indonesia, some of the stuff is so far advanced towards being fuel oil it doesn't need to be refined at all.
DKRW's problem in Wyoming was that in order for the Carbon County effort to make sense, petroleum had to be sufficiently high, while coal was sufficiently low, that they could undertake the effort and make money at it. Well, coal's pretty cheap, but the price of oil has just been too darned low. So the plans have been shelved.
It should be noted, however, that the coal isn't going anywhere and this might conceivably be the future of coal in the state, at some point.
