Mike Conaway: “That will do the research to be able to learn how to burn all forms of coal from the lignite that we have in Texas to…”

“That will do the research to be able to learn how to burn all forms of coal from the lignite that we have in Texas to the hard coals in Pennsylvania and Illinois, learn how to burn that coal to generate electricity but yet capture the CO2, and then take that CO2 and either sell it back to the oil and gas business to sweep oil reservoirs to enhance the oil recovery, or in many places we will have to learn how to put it underground, deeply buried, permanently buried in the ground so it is not in our atmosphere. That is essential that we get that done, and the sooner the better, because all of us believe coal is a long-time solution to electricity production, but it ought to be clean-burning coal, zero-emission coal-fired plant. That is important not only for the coal plants that we ought to be building in the United States, but India and China are also part of this consortium that is going to develop this technology. China is bringing on a 500-megawatt power plant every 2 weeks or so. India is in a similar mode. They are going to burn coal however they need to in order to generate electricity because electricity and an increased electricity supply drives growth and economies. The availability of the electricity helps drive the growth in these economies. China and India are going to continue to burn coal and spew CO2 into the atmosphere no matter what we do.”