Houston-based company Hunton Energy is proposing to build what it calls the world’s first “green refinery” on the Texas Gulf Coast. The proposal envisions a refinery with the capacity to convert 340,000bpd of Canadian bitumen crude oil into clean-burning jet and diesel fuel. Its defining feature is the integration of a gasification facility, which would capture most of the plant’s carbon emissions before they reach the atmosphere. Hunton previously announced plans to build a USD 2.8 billion gasification facility at Dow Chemical Co.’s manufacturing complex in Freeport. The new refinery could land at the same Dow site or at a stand-alone site in Texas City. Hunton officials also will not disclose names of companies that have committed to the project. Those companies include a major oil firm that will supply crude oil and another major company that has agreed to buy the plant’s chemical products. Announced in December, the gasification plant was originally slated to break ground by the end of the year. But it was pushed back to early 2009 pending a review of an air permit application by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.