Naked emperor just keeps on chooglin’

As expected, the Iron Range Resources board voted Monday to give Excelsior Energy a sweetheart two-year extension on making any payments on its combined $9.5 million in IRR loans since 2001. Bill Hanna of the Mesabi Daily News is reporting that the vote was 9-1, with Rep. Tom Anzelc (DFL-Balsam Township) the sole “no” vote. This differs from the vote total Tom described to me yesterday afternoon (he said it was a voice vote and that he believed it was 7-3). Here is Hanna’s description of the exchange:

Anzelc proposed that Excelsior Energy make “good-faith” monthly payments on the $1.5 million loan beginning in January.

He found support for his proposal in a “friendly amendment’ by East Range lawmaker/board member Rep. Tom Rukavina, DFL-Virginia, who wanted the payments to begin July 2009, the start of the agency’s new fiscal year.

However, the vast majority of board members said to vote for such a resolution could jeopardize an economic development project that was given birth by the agency in 2001 – at a time when the bottom had fallen out of the Range economy with the closing of the LTV Mining Co. and the loss of 1,400 jobs.

“I don’t want any vote I would make to jeopardize a project that would be good for the area. And this isn’t the first time the board has looked at payment extensions,” said Board Member Sen. Tom Bakk, DFL-Cook.

…

“I appreciate all the discussion. But this is about fiscal responsibility . We need to be very protective and good stewards of this money,” Anzelc said.

In any event, this confederacy of lawyers, lobbyists and consultants prevailed again with the help of a handful of officials who couldn’t tell a kilowatt from a steak sandwich. Excelsior gets another two years to attempt to build a $2.1 billion power plant that the power industry doesn’t want in order to sell overpriced power to customers who are using less electricity than last year. It doesn’t have permits and probably won’t get them. It doesn’t have a customer and probably won’t get one. It hasn’t reported more than $60,000 in private investment since its inception and probably never will. It bills itself as a “clean coal” project but initial proposals still don’t include carbon capture. They say they’re “sequestration ready” which is like me saying I’m “ready” to date several attractive supermodels at the same time. Good luck! And yet, with a straight face, Hanna reports the following:

After the meeting, Julie Jorgensen, co-CEO and co-president of Excelsior Energy, said her confidence level is high that the $2 billion-plus project will move ahead.

“There is bipartisan agreement that clean coal projects are going to be important to the nation’s energy policy. President-elect Barack Obama has made that clear,” she said.

Yes, jump on the Obama bandwagon, why don’t you. Yes, Obama has supported clean coal plants and will in the future. But even the coal industry knows that these carbon capture plants work best near the mouth of coal mines in areas where you can actually bury the carbon. Excelsior’s Mesaba Energy Project is thousands of miles from coal and thousands of additional miles from the place they’d need to bury carbon. They would need a coal contract (probably with a competitor, who would rake them on the price) and a $1 billion pipeline (that’s just a large number that has been thrown around; it’s probably much more than that) just to function.

This will never happen. That $9.5 million is gone forever. The sooner we admit it and move on the sooner we can focus on Iron Range infrastructure, small businesses, entrepreneurship and education. These people continue to misrepresent the reality of this boondoggle and local media, partly through agenda and partly through pure ignorance, has helped them every step of the way. Now the death of this wasteful project will come during the 2010 election year. (Brilliant, guys … just brilliant). And if someone loses a seat or a governor’s race as a result, I will shed not one single tear.

NOTE: I am Tom Anzelc’s campaign chair and friend. While we do discuss these matters before, sometimes during and always after the fact, I don’t speak for him on this blog. In this case, however, I am proud of Tom’s courage in standing against his friends to protect the people of the Iron Range from pinstriped bandits. My words, not his.