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northeast of Marissa in Washington County will be hungry for construction workers from many trades during its 48- to
50-month build.
"We're talking anywhere from 1,700 to 2,000 people in terms of the peak number we'll need at the site during the
construction period," said Colin Kelly, vice president of generation development at Peabody and president of Prairie State
Generating Co. LLC. "Those ballpark numbers include construction as well as supporting services such as janitorial, security
guards and others. We've been working closely with Dale Stewart and the Southwestern Illinois Building and Construction
Trades Council (AFL-CIO) and they've been big supporters of the project. They're working hard to help us get a handle on how
many laborers, carpenters, welders, boilermakers and other trades we're going to need."
Kelly says the Prairie State Energy Campus construction project is of a magnitude Southwestern Illinois has not seen
before.
"Not only in terms of sheer numbers of workers, but also in terms of the variety of expertise," said Kelly. "We're
talking 10 or 11 separate crafts at a minimum."
Using the local workforce is first priority, he stresses. But due to the already tight labor market in the region, Kelly
says casting the net more broadly will be necessary to attract the numbers and quality of skilled tradespeople needed to
build the energy plant.
"First of all, we're going to tap the resources in the immediate area," Kelly said. "We're focusing on making sure our
Locals have the biggest share of the jobs. That's a given. Then we'll branch out to Carbondale and Springfield. But with the
labor market as tight as it is, we may have to go beyond that radius to pull in who we need to get the job done."
Pulling in skilled tradespeople from beyond the borders of Southwestern Illinois - and even the St. Louis metropolitan
area - can have residual benefits in terms of economic impact, according to Kelly. After relocating to this region for four
years' of non-stop construction work, they may become accustomed to the quality of life and opt to remain in the area.
"Our intent would be that they come here, move here and stay here, once they see the opportunity and lifestyle that this
region offers them," said Kelly. "We're working closely with the municipalities, businesses and chambers in Washington
County and with the county itself to ensure that we present every opportunity we can to this influx of new people."
But Peabody isn't stopping there. In addition to tapping the existing Locals and recruiting skilled tradespeople from
across the state and beyond, the company is working with educators - including Southwestern Illinois College in Belleville,
Rend Lake College in Ina, John A. Logan College in Marion and Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis, Mo. Together
they're channeling candidates through training programs to ready them for a job on the Prairie State Energy Campus
construction project.
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"We anticipate that approximately 75 percent of the construction workforce on Prairie State will be local and 25 percent
will be from out of the area," said Kelly, "and we also recognize that it generally takes about a year to ramp up - to get
above 1,000 workers on a project. There is definitely the potential for overlap with the ConocoPhillips coker project in
Madison County in terms of available construction workforce, but there's also the potential for synergies," he added.
Also during the 4th quarter of 2007, just 55 miles to the north/northwest of Marissa, ConocoPhillips' Wood River Refinery
will embark on phase one of a two-phase, $4 billion expansion. The Madison County-based refinery on 336 acres near Roxana is
waiting on final approval from its board of directors and on a final nod from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency
on permits to expand its capacity to process more crude from Canada, and also to begin coking.
Coking - a process that will enable the refinery to pull out more product from the crude oil - is another step toward
less dependency upon Middle Eastern crude and another step in ConocoPhillips' partnership with Canadian natural gas and oil
resource partner EnCana. The partnership was announced in October.
Melissa Erker, government and community relations director at ConocoPhillips Wood River Refinery, says the mega-expansion
project, like Prairie State's, will require thousands of members of the skilled trades over several years.
"If all the approvals go as we would hope, we would see preliminary construction beginning in the 3rd or 4th quarter of
2007," said Erker. "We anticipate an average, over the life of the construction project, of 1,500 additional construction
jobs - that's on top of the existing 800 ConocoPhillips jobs and 200 full-time contractors we have working at the refinery.
This is going to be a serious endeavor in terms of the number of construction workers on site," she added.
Phase one of the refinery expansion - the scope of which includes building a brand-new processing component and making
changes to existing equipment - is expected to take place from late 2007 to 2111, according to Erker. Phase one will take
the refinery's current level of Canadian crude production from 25 percent to roughly 50 percent.
Phase two of the Roxana project's expansion, projected to take place from 2111 through 2013, should increase the
refinery's Canadian crude production up to 100 percent, Erker said.
The Wood River Refinery has never been heavily dependent upon foreign crude, she said. But for the percentage of it that
ConocoPhillips does rely upon, Erker said the refiner prefers to form partnerships and alliances with neighboring countries
and not be dependent upon the Middle East.
Even without this $4 billion expansion project at center stage, Erker said ConocoPhillips' Wood River Refinery regularly
contributes to the overall economic impact of the region by generating construction work onsite - and by bringing those
workers into local stores, hotels-motels and restaurants to generate revenue for the region's businesses.
"On a routine basis, we're doing major maintenance work where we'll set down major pieces of equipment, inspect them and
clean them," Erker said. "And typically when we have these maintenance periods, we have 1,000 workers here for a 30-day
period. It's an economic boost to the region."
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