Great Plains Synfuels Plant, North Dakota

This unique and massive plant opened in 1984, and cost $2.1 billion. It uses lignite coal, from the nearby Antelope Mine, to produce natural gas. Its owners, the Basin Power Cooperative, which operates the coal-fired Antelope Power Plant next door, claims this is the only commercial scale coal gasification plant in the US that manufactures natural gas. This gas (methane) is piped, via the Northern Border Pipeline, to users in Montana, Canada, and, mostly, to the Midwest via a pipeline interconnect in Ventura, Iowa. A byproduct, Carbon Dioxide, is shipped via pipeline to the Weyburn oil field, in Saskatchewan, as part of the largest carbon capture and storage project in the world, according to the company.