Policies Relating to the Importation of Liquified Natural Gas

On November 14, 1977, the Under Secretary of the Department of Energy (DOE) responded to GAO's August 17, 1977, report on the first Federal attempt to demonstrate a synthetic fossil energy technology--the Coalcon project. DOE disagreed with GAO's (1) computation of the cost overrun for the project and (2) assessment of the adequacy of DOE's monitoring of the project.

The purpose of this letter is to summarize the situation with respect to the Coalcon project and to comment on parts of the DOE response where it disagrees with GAO's report.