Natchez &8212; If Rentech officials can fast track the project, a Natchez coal gasification plant might be the first of its kind in the nation.

The Colorado-based fuel manufacturer announced this week it hopes to build a 200-job plant at the Belwood site in Adams County by 2010.

Rentech would invest between $650 million and $750 million in the Natchez property.

The company is developing a similar plant in East Dubuque, Ill., where it will convert a nitrogen fertilizer plant into a coal-gasification operation using Illinois coal.

The Natchez plant would also use Illinois coal, shipped down the Mississippi River.

Richard Sheppard, president of Rentech Inc.&8217;s wholly owned subsidiary Rentech Development Corp., said the Natchez project could progress quickly.

Rentech is hoping to receive some federal and state incentives, both tax breaks and financial assistance.

Rentech is not seeking any funding from Adams County, but the next step, Sheppard said, is working toward acquiring the property at the site of the old Belwood Country Club.

&8220;We need to negotiate some kind of structure with the county to get control of the site,&8221; Sheppard said.

Adams County Supervisors President Darryl Grennell said the county has not yet worked out a deal for the property, whether it will sell it to Rentech or offer a long-term lease, but that is one of the next steps in the process.

Work already done on the East Dubuque plan can help cut a year&8217;s time from the Natchez project, said Mark Koenig, director of investor relations for Rentech.

Next, engineering and technology groups will work to define the project and its goals.

The entire project has progressed quickly, Natchez-Adams County Economic Development Authority chairman Woody Allen said.

&8220;What we&8217;ve been able to do here (in a few weeks), it took two years to do (in East Dubuque),&8221; Allen said.

The economic impact could come much earlier than the first fuel production, Allen said.

The $650 million investment is &8220;more than we generate as a community in 10 years,&8221; he said.

And the construction jobs &8212; up to 1,500 at peak &8212; over four years would also bring new people and new money into the area, Allen said.

Meanwhile, the project &8212; especially if it is one of the first of its kind in the country &8212; would garner a lot of attention for Natchez.

&8220;We&8217;re going to have planes of people from all over the country coming to see it,&8221; Allen said.

Rentech would use a patented form of the Fischer-Tropsch process for turning coal into a clean-burning fuel. The Fischer-Tropsch process was first developed by two German scientists in the 1920s.

The U.S. Department of Defense is interested in the kind of fuel that would be produced by the plant, and Rentech officials have also said there would be a market among First Responders.