Australian Power & Energy Limited

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Australian Power & Energy Limited (APEL) was a company which was founded by Allan Blood in 1998 to developed a coal to gas to liquids project located near Loy Yang. The company has now been sold to a joint venture of Shell and Anglo American. The project is currently on hold.

Background

APEL was a project-specific company. The company proposed to build a $6billion power plant that will turn coal into gas, producing liquid fuels and generate electricity, with the carbon dioxide being geosequested.

APEL says its electricity generator will produce only 25 per cent of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere by existing brown coal plants. APEL chief executive officer, Pearce Bowman, stated: "it would take two years for the company to complete feasibility studies… and prove it could pass the necessary State Government and environmental approvals. It would take another three years to build the project - which means the plant will not be commissioned before 2007."

In 2003, APEL, with its value now greatly increased, sold 20 per cent of the company to Anglo American for an undisclosed price. In 2004, Anglo bought out the remaining 80 per cent, for what one source says was a fee of $52 million, of which Alan Blood received about $20 million.

Another source however, says that the company sold for a total of more than $100 million, with an undisclosed amount going directly to Alan Blood.

Anglo then went into a joint venture with Shell to form Monash Energy. In 2006, Monash Energy re-announced what was essentially the original proposals: a new coal mine, drying and gasification plant, carbon dioxide capture and storage and a gas-to-liquids plan, to be operational by 2008. A year later in 2009, a company source said of the project: "it's not commercially viable." (See Monash Energy article for further detail).

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