Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal is supporting a Texas company's proposal to build a major plant for turning coal into gasoline.

The U.S. Department of Energy is weighing an application from DKRW Advanced Fuels LLC of Houston for a loan to help build the proposed $2.7 billion coal-to-gasoline plant.

"This would be the first major industrial gasification facility that produces transport fuels _ gasoline or diesel _ from coal in the United States," DKRW chairman Bob Kelly of Houston said Friday.

The public has until Monday to comment on what issues the DOE should address in an environmental study. The Sierra Club has voiced concerns about the project, saying it's concerned about greenhouse gas emissions tied to global warming.

The plant would be built next to a coal mine about 13 miles from the town of Medicine Bow, about 100 west of Cheyenne in southeastern Wyoming.

The plant would process nearly 10,000 tons of low-sulfur coal a day from a mine into 21,000 barrels a day of gasoline. The fuel then would be piped roughly 200 miles southeast to the Denver market.

"It's really the great strength of what we're doing, producing gasoline from U.S. coal reserves," Kelly said. He said the nation currently imports almost two-thirds of its petroleum products.

"It's got real strong benefits for the country, that's why we think it's in the interests of the country to do this," Kelly said.

Technology to transform coal to liquid fuels has been around for decades. Germany used a similar process during World War II to make up for the country's lack of oil reserves.

Kelly said similar plants are now in operation in China and South Africa, but said they use different techniques.

"The price of oil has increased, and it makes the technologies that have developed over the last 50 years economic to use at this point in time," Kelly said.

DKRW also proposes to incorporates environmental refinements that supporters say will highlight U.S. coal as a viable alternative to imported oil.

The company proposes to capture over half of the carbon dioxide emitted during the coal refining process. It plans to pipe the CO2 gas to Wyoming oil fields where pumping it underground would serve the dual purpose of keeping it out of the atmosphere while pressurizing the oil reserves to allow more of it to be pumped out.

Kelly said the resulting gasoline also would have much lower sulfur levels than typical gasoline.