Korea Picks A $22 Billion Texas Gas Plant As First Down Payment On Its $350 Billion Pledge To Trump

Ten months, one tariff threat and several "sleepless nights" later, South Korea has finally found somewhere to put the first piece of the $350 billion it promised to invest in America. The winner is a gas-fired power complex in Encinal, Texas (population 540, where real estate is about to ballistic), and it is built to feed the one thing Washington can never get enough of: electricity for data centers and chip fabs.

According to the FT, Seoul this week chose the proposed $22.3 billion, 6.3-gigawatt complex. The White House could announce it as soon as Wednesday, possibly with Trump announcing it himself, depending on how preparations for Xi Jinping's arrival in Washington go. Trump and President Lee Jae Myung met for 30 minutes on Tuesday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. The deal still needs final US approval.

Yonhap reported that the plant will be built in stages: an initial 1.4GW of simple-cycle gas turbines, followed by roughly 4.9GW of more efficient combined-cycle generation. However, in the first whiff of even more vaporware, no customers have been confirmed. Korea's READ MORE AT SOURCE »