SUGAR LAND--June 23, 2017--Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Mississippi Power Company (Gulfport, Mississippi), a unit of the Southern Company (NYSE:SO) (Atlanta, Georgia), may wind up being the not-so-proud owner of the world's most expensive gas-fired power plant--the Kemper County integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) facility. Mississippi utility regulators voted unanimously June 21 to have legal counsel prepare a draft order mandating that Mississippi Power burn only natural gas at Kemper, abandoning gasification of lignite as a power plant fuel and forcing the companies to eat billions of dollars of cost overruns tied to the plant's lignite coal gasifier and related assets.

Within this article: Update on the Kemper County IGCC project.