The value of the U.S. movie industry is $10 billion which roughly equates to only two coal-to-liquid plants. During the Oscar’s I learned that the movie industry is a $10 billion industry. $10 billion? Yes, $10 billion. The revenue potential for all the wealthy producers, the creative directors, the imaginative writers, the costume persons, the hard working stage hands and the talented actors and actresses and the entire U.S. movie industry is only $10 billion.

Yet, the industry seems to be everywhere and immense in scope and size. I confirmed that the domestic movie industry is $10 billion on the Motion Picture Association website. I decided to also check rottentomatoes.com to see what the gross revenue was for some of the top films.

I was surprised to find that Slumdog Millionaire, the year’s Best Movie, has only grossed $8.4 million revenue. So what is the point?

The point is that a commercial scale coal/petcoke gasification plant with an air separation unit and a Fischer-Tropsch or Methanol-to-Gasoline unit would cost roughly $4 to $5 billion based upon several published reports. Wow! The entire U.S. movie industry is only equivalent to the cost of two Coal-To-Liquids plants.

Anyone that is in the petrochemical/coal gasification/engineering and construction business is aware of the formidable capital investment required to construct a Coal-To-Liquids plant, but this really puts the cost into perspective for folks that are not in the industry.

The general public thinks that making a movie is a huge investment. The average cost to make a movie is $106 million. This is a very, very low investment compared to the cost to construct a Coal-To-Liquids plant.

This is why the U.S. government needs to provide mechanisms to reduce risk for the developers, owners and financial institutions. The government should provide risk mitigation mechanisms such as loan guarantees, outright loans, tax credits and other instruments for developers and owners. There is a good chance this will be done. President Obama stated in his address to Congress that there will be legisislation to stimulate the energy sector and included “clean coal” in his remarks.