- Energy security depends on more than pipelines, plants and reserves. It depends on experienced people who know how to run and manage them.
- Frontieras’s Mason County project is expected to create approximately 200 full-time jobs, with wages averaging three times the average income for the area, along with roughly 2,000 construction jobs during the build phase.
- The plant itself will process 7,500 tons of coal per day using FASForm(TM), the company’s Solid Carbon Fractionation process, producing diesel, naphtha, aviation fuel, hydrogen, methane and FASCarbon(TM), a clean-coal product.
A domestic energy project only strengthens the country if it first strengthens the community that builds it. In Point Pleasant, West Virginia, that is the promise behind Frontieras North America and its FASForm coal facility, a project the company says will bring approximately 200 full-time jobs and roughly 2,000 construction positions to Mason County.
Energy security depends on more than pipelines, plants and reserves. It requires people who know how to run and handle them. The United States has spent decades letting its domestic energy workforce shrink, particularly in coal country, and that erosion carries its own risk. A country cannot rebuild energy capacity quickly if it no longer has the trained labor pool to staff it.
Appalachia is a clear example of what that erosion looks like. Coal mining employment across the region fell from nearly 56,000 jobs in 2010 to about 28,000 in 2023, a nearly 50% decline in just over a decade. West Virginia alone employed 14,014 coal workers in 2023, down from tens of thousands a generation earlier. Every mine that closes displaces trained operators, engineers and technicians, and that expertise does not come back overnight once it is gone.
Rebuilding domestic energy capacity means rebuilding the workforce behind it at the same time. New industrial projects that hire and train locally do double duty: They add supply to the energy system, and they rebuild the skilled labor base the system depends on for the long run. Communities that have spent years watching energy jobs disappear are also the communities best positioned to staff the next generation of energy projects, provided the jobs actually show up.
That is the case Frontieras is making in Mason County. The company’s first commercial FASForm facility broke ground in Point Pleasant earlier this year, representing an estimated $850 million investment along the Ohio River. The project is expected to create approximately 200 full-time jobs, with wages averaging three times the average income for the area, along with roughly 2,000 construction jobs during the build phase.
“This groundbreaking marks a decisive step in the commercialization of FASForm(TM) and the return of serious industrial investment to America’s energy regions,” said Frontieras cofounder and CEO Matthew McKean. “We’re building a new class of energy infrastructure that extracts maximum value from domestic resources — profitably, at scale and with a zero-waste design.” For a county with an estimated population of about 24,700 people, a project of that size carries real weight.
Frontieras hired West Virginia native Robert Portz as vice president of operations and engineering to lead the plant through construction and startup. His role includes coordination with engineering firms, construction oversight, workforce development, and commissioning of the plant. Portz previously helped build one of the most profitable renewable diesel operations in Wyoming, and Frontieras selected him in part because of his refinery background and his ties to the state.
The plant itself will process 7,500 tons of coal per day using FASForm, the company’s Solid Carbon Fractionation process, producing diesel, naphtha, aviation fuel, hydrogen, methane and FASCarbon(TM), a clean-coal product. Frontieras did not choose Mason County randomly. The company has cited the county’s access to coal, skilled labor, and rail and water transportation as reasons it beat out competing sites in Texas and Wyoming.
State officials have framed the project as validation of the region’s labor pool. West Virginia Senator Eric Tarr described the current wave of investment in his district, which includes Frontieras alongside the nearby Nucor steel plant, as “a gold rush” for the area. Point Pleasant Mayor Amber Tatterson has said the city is now working to upgrade local infrastructure and utilities to keep pace with the growth.
For Mason County, the FASForm plant is a bet that a coal-fired workforce, given the right technology and the right jobs, still has plenty left to build. If the plant hires and trains at the scale Frontieras and county leaders expect, Point Pleasant will have more than a new employer on the Ohio River. It will have a template for how a coal community rebuilds its labor base around a new generation of coal technology, rather than watching that expertise leave for good.
For more information about Frontieras, visit the company’s website at www.Frontieras.com.
NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to Frontieras are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/Frontieras
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