Add another notch to the tally of credit-crunch casualties: West Virginia's planned coal-to-liquids plant. Consol Energy and Synthesis Energy Systems pulled the plug on the project, which aimed to produce 100 million gallons of gasoline from coal.

West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin announced the $800 million coal project in July (AP) SES president and chief executive Tim Vail blamed the credit crunch: "Given the current state of the U.S. credit markets, SES is proactively reevaluating domestic capital investments at this time," he said in a release. SES will build a coal-to-liquids facility in China, where credit is easier to come by.

But is the financial meltdown really to blame�or are falling oil prices? West Virginia state officials said they've known SES was planning to abandon the project for "the past few months," before the credit crunch really hit.

Consol Energy still wants to build a coal-to-liquids plant in West Virginia. But converting coal into liquid gasoline is a costly process (and anethema to environmentalists). Falling oil prices don't make it any more appealing. Consol's vice president of external affairs, Tom Hoffman, told the Wheeling Intelligencer future plans hinge to a large extent on what crude oil does:

He said Consol will work with state officials to try and bring a coal liquefaction plant to the area, but much depends on the oil market. He noted that when the project was first announced, the price of a barrel of oil was much higher than it is today and the economy was not as bad. "Clearly, the change in crude oil prices will have an effect on any coal-to-liquefaction project," Hoffman said. "Nobody has a good handle on what the next year holds for anybody. It's too difficult."