With oil prices topping $62 a barrel, an official with the U.S. Department of Defense told a national audience of fuel researchers meeting in West Virginia that the department is actively looking for partners to build a commercial plant to produce alternative liquid fuels from domestic resources such as coal.

“If you build it, we will come,”said Bill Harrison, senior adviser to the assistant deputy undersecretary of defense for advanced systems and concepts.

“This is the type of opportunity we shared with members of the West Virginia Legislature during the recent interim meetings at WVU ,”said Richard Bajura, director of the National Research Center for Coal and Energy at West Virginia University .

Harrison told members of the Consortium for Fossil Fuel Science that while the Defense Department is interested in all energy sources, the nearest term technology appears to be to gasify coal to produce fuels via a process called Fischer-Tropsch.

The consortium met Aug. 1-3 at Stonewall Resort in Roanoke , W.Va. WVU has been a member of the consortium since its creation in 1986.

“Developing alternative fuels through coal gasification offers the promise of starting new industries in West Virginia that could also increase demand for West Virginia coal,”Bajura said.

The Defense Department’s Battlefield Use of Fuels of the Future program will need to purchase about 20 million gallons of alternative fuel over the program’s lifetime. Currently the department uses about 370,000 barrels of fuel per day worldwide.

Harrison proposed the co-production of Fischer-Tropsch fuel, electricity and fertilizer from a single gasification plant in a joint venture involving coal, power and chemical companies. Such so-called polygeneration plants may offer the type of commercial success that the department seeks to ensure the long-term supply of domestic fuel.

“We have been talking with Bill and the Defense Department for about a year now,”said Bajura about WVU ’s research efforts. Bajura hopes to bring Harrison back to West Virginia to meet with groups such as the Chemical Alliance Zone.

“With West Virginia’s coal reserves equaling about 70 billion barrels of oil, perhaps West Virginia could be the new Kuwait ,”Harrison said.