Sunoco will build coke plant in Granite City, Ill.

By Tom Stundza -- Purchasing, 4/30/2008 11:50:00 AM

Sunoco’s Gateway Energy and Coke subsidiary will build a facility in Granite City, Ill., to supply metallurgical-grade coke and steam to the adjacent U.S. Steel steelmaking facility. The new coke facility will include 120 heat recovery ovens capable of producing approximately 650,000 tons of screened blast furnace coke per year, which will be sold to U.S. Steel under a 15-year contract. The coke facility will also supply steam to a new cogeneration plant that will be built, owned and operated by U.S. Steel.

Construction of the coke facility will take approximately 18 months to build, the parent company says in a press release. It will cost approximately $290 million to build by Gateway, which has gone into the coke plant construction business using a proprietary low-cost cokemaking technology from affiliate firm SunCoke Energy. Gateway already has 4.3 million tons/year of coke capacity at plants operating or being built next to steel mills in Middletown and Haverhill, Ohio.