PINE BLUFF, Ark.-Tell Roger Williams that a multibillion-dollar plant for turning natural gas into liquid fuel near Pine Bluff sounds too good to be true, and he'll turn to history, engineering and finance to argue it's too good not to be.
Williams, whose company spent more than a year securing 1,100 acres in northern Jefferson County for what would be the largest construction and economic development project in Arkansas history, marshals all those subjects to make a case that his plan isn't even risky. With skills he learned in years of energy law, he offers his risk summation:
"On a risk scale of 1 to 10, drilling a well in deep water in an unexplored area would be a 10; you invest $100 million to see if anything is down there, and your chances are typically less than 10 percent," he told Arkansas Business. "That's high risk. At the other end, building a pipeline is a 1. It's been done many times, the risks are known, and it's simply execution. So if you look at those two extremes, we would view our project as probably close to a 2. We have an established technology, we're working with the most reputable contractors, and we have reputable buyers for our product. This is not a risky project."
That doesn't mean that Williams thinks the task will be easy. As co-founder and CEO of Energy Security Partners, he has to obtain environmental permits, assemble the largest cranes in the world and deliver equipment so massive it can be moved only by river barge-not to mention raise the minimum of $3 billion needed for the first phase of construction. But Williams, a man of detail from a military family, trim and neat from well-groomed beard to impeccable blue blazer, has clearly done some homework.
A chemical engineering graduate before studying law, he starts by describing a nearly century-old chemical process he first encountered as an undergraduate at Vanderbilt, one that turns carbons into liquid fuel. Then he turns to the complexities of assembling big deals in the oil business, a process he learned over nine years at Exxon. Next come the minutiae of contracts and finance, which he studied in law school at the University of Alabama, and applied as an energy attorney in New York.
The culmination is an ambitious, highly detailed plan for the gas-to-liquid plant. Economic development officials say it would bring more than 2,500 construction jobs and provide 225 permanent positions averaging at least $40 an hour in one of the most economically depressed areas of the state.