OPINION: Wyoming County on verge of economic boom

By all accounts, Wyoming County is on the verge of an economic boom.

Creating nearly 300 new jobs, three companies will use new technologies to bring the county’s long-abandoned coal waste into rapidly growing global markets.

“This is a real opportunity for employment in Wyoming County and for our young people,” emphasized Mike Goode, Wyoming County Economic Development Authority chairman. “This will be a real boost to our economy just with the jobs.

“But these types of projects do not happen overnight,” Goode emphasized.

It takes time for planning, design work, construction, and numerous other factors, he noted.

For generations, the coal waste from long-ago coal operations has been sitting in sludge ponds, gob piles, and impoundments across the county and the coalfields of southern West Virginia.

With the new technologies, the waste products can now be extracted and processed into products that are in great demand across the globe.

AmeriCarbon Products, American Resources Corporation, and Omnis Sublimation Recovery Technologies are committed to constructing processing plants in Wyoming County, noted Christy Laxton, county Economic Development Authority executive director.

All three companies are still in the site design phase, Laxton explained, and continue to move forward with their projects.

AmeriCarbon Products is building the United States’ first coal-to-carbon processing plant in the county’s $7 million Barkers Creek Industrial Park, located near Mullens.

In less than five years, converting coal into carbon products is projected to jump from the current $10-billion-a-year industry to a $100-billion-a-year industry – and Wyoming County is expected to play a significant role in the market, according to officials.

Currently, the project is in the design phase – designing three shell buildings, planning where the buildings will be located, as well as where utilities need to be placed, among numerous other details.

One building will be used as a carbon manufacturing facility, another will be used as a coal prep facility, and the third structure will house a lab and office space, Laxton explained.

Additional project elements include a roadway, parking, landscaping, site utilities, architectural, HVAC, fire protection and other accessories.

The final design will also include room for future expansion.

The project is much bigger than initially anticipated, changing the scope if the project, Laxton explained.

With grant funding awarded for parts of the project, the project scope then had to be changed to fit within the requirements of the grant funding.

Additionally, upgrades to the utilities along with construction of a new bridge have to be completed.

The goal is to have the design phase completed in October and equipment moving into the completed facility early in 2025, according to officials.

AmeriCarbon Products has its research and development facility in Morgantown.

The company wants to take advantage of West Virginia’s significant bituminous coal resources, which is best for the carbon process, and use it for something besides power, according to officials.

The eco-friendly process can change the characterization of coal tar pitch and tailor it to the specifications of developers and carbon product companies.

Those products could include carbon fiber, structural panels for radar absorbers, graphite and carbon electrodes, lithium batteries, along with conductive and insulating foams.

Coal-tar pitch is a thick, black liquid which remains after the distillation of coal tar. It is used in asphalt products, coatings, some paints, roofing materials, paving, among other products.

AmeriCarbon will generate $85 million in private investment in the industrial park.

The specialized equipment needed for the plant is also being designed and will be built off-site, then moved into the new facilities.

Once operational, the plant will process from 100 to 200 tons a day, according to company officials, and operate around the clock, seven days a week, using three shifts.

The industrial park is the property of the county EDA, Laxton explained, and AmeriCarbon will lease the property.

The company will need the entire park.

Once the plant is completed, AmeriCarbon is expected to create about 40 jobs to begin.

As the company grows in Wyoming County, the total number of jobs is estimated to increase to about 70.

The average pay for the jobs will range from $50,000 to $75,000 in addition to benefits, Laxton said.

Management positions will pay about $120,000.

Located between Mullens and Herndon, the 10.85-acre industrial park stretches between the Norfolk Southern Railroad and Barkers Creek, just off W.Va. Rt. 10.

The county EDA purchased the property – the former Lusk Lumber site – in 2011.

Water and sewer are available on the site, which is not located within the floodplain, according to officials.

Environmental remediation site work was completed with a $200,000 federal Brownfields Assessment Grant from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Through “Congressionally Directed Spending” items, previously known as budget earmarks, U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito has provided $850,000 for the new access bridge, along with $835,000 to improve and increase the electrical power at the park.

The current bridge access for the industrial park has severe weight restrictions, Laxton said.

Once completed, the industrial park will have two access points.

American Resources Corporation will create more than 100 well-paying jobs in the Oceana area when their plan to utilize critical and rare earth minerals for the rapidly expanding electrification market is fully implemented.

A supplier of raw materials to the new infrastructure and electrification marketplace, American Resources Corporation has entered into a bond purchase agreement with Hilltop Securities Inc. for the sale of Solid Waste Disposal Facility Revenue Bonds, Series 2023, for the company’s Wyoming County Coal (WCC) complex near Oceana. The sale will fund the company’s expansion plan.

The Wyoming County Coal complex is strategically located within one of the last substantial mid-volatile metallurgical carbon deposits and, with direct rail access, provides favorable transportation logistics to the United States’ east coast ports.

Additionally, the complex is surrounded by a number of high-value metallurgical carbon reserves and mining sites that would otherwise be considered “stranded” without access to the WCC processing and logistics complex.

The company’s focus will initially be to bring two new underground mines into production, which will produce an estimated 55,000 tons of carbon per month, with further expansion potential as the mines are developed.

American Resources will also look to upgrade and expand WCC’s carbon processing plant’s capacity from its current 350 tons per hour rate, to approximately 700 tons per hour, while also incorporating the company’s innovative “capture” and “process” technology, which will enable the facility to capture and process critical and rare earth elements from new carbon production and carbon-based waste sources to produce rare earth and critical element concentrates.

The rare earth elements and critical element concentrates produced will be transported to the company’s ReElement Technologies refining facility in Indiana for further separation and purification into forms needed for the manufacturing of modern goods and technologies.

American Resources is focused on the extraction and processing of metallurgical carbon, an essential ingredient used in steel-making, critical and rare earth minerals for the electrification market, and reprocessed metal to be recycled, according to a press release.

The company has operations in the central Appalachian basin of eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia, where premium metallurgical carbon and rare earth mineral deposits are concentrated.

ReElement Technologies is redefining how critical and rare earth elements are sourced and processed, while focusing on the recycling of end-of-life products, such as rare earth permanent magnets and lithium-ion batteries, as well as coal-based waste streams and byproducts to create a low-cost and environmentally-safe, circular supply chain, according to the press release.

Omnis Sublimation Recovery Technologies has created new technology that will now allow coal waste products to be extracted and sold as components in cell phones, computers and other electronic devices.

Once the property design is completed, “Omnis will hit the ground running,” Laxton emphasized. “They’ve been doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work.”

Omnis’ technology can extract pure metals from coal impoundment mineral waste using ultra-high heat without acids or harmful chemicals.

The technology recovers 100 percent of the metals, including all critical, strategic, and rare earth metals, with zero waste and no harmful emissions, according to officials.

Coal waste impoundments and gob piles are rich in critical metals, including strategic metals and rare earth metals. Millions of tons of these metals are concentrated from the natural coal seam sources.

The coal mining process has concentrated these minerals, and they are available in the multitude of waste impoundments.

The company is investing $60 million in Wyoming County, creating 100 jobs to start.

Omnis has begun engineering and site infrastructure.

The building and equipment are expected to be completed and installed in the near future.

Each cell phone requires 46 rare earth metals to produce.

Currently, only six of those metals are processed in the United States; the other 40 are processed in Wuhan, China, according to officials.

Omnis Building Technologies is also building a $40 million, 150,000-square-foot facility in Bluefield to manufacture housing materials that will revolutionize the future of residential construction, creating 150 to 300 jobs in the process, according to officials.