(The Center Square) – The U.S. Department of Energy announced it has closed on a $1.5 billion loan to an Indiana company that is expected used to finance a coal-fired fertilizer plant in West Terra Haute.
Wabash Valley Resources, LLC, plans to use the funds to repurpose a coal gasification plant that has been idle since 2016. Coal from a nearby mine and petcoke, a byproduct of oil refining, will be used as feedstocks to produce 500,000 metric tons of anhydrous ammonia per year, the department of energy said in a news release.
“For too long, America has been dependent on foreign sources of fertilizer,” said U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright. “Under President Trump’s leadership, we are changing that by putting America first, relying on American coal, American workers, and American innovation to power our farms and feed our families,” Wright said.
The loan delivers on the Trump administration’s promise to responsibly steward taxpayer dollars and unleash American energy dominance, the department said. In recent years, farmers in Indiana and other parts of the Corn Belt have imported anhydrous ammonia from Canada, the Caribbean, the Middle East and Russia.
The loan is the second to close under the Energy Dominance Financing Program created by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
In September 2024, the Biden administration gave a conditional commitment to a $1.56 billion loan to finance the Wabash Valley Resources project under the Inflation Reduction Act. At that time, project planers intended to use petcoke as the sole feedstock and for the carbon dioxide emissions produced to be buried permanently underground in a nearby coal mine.
