"Stimulus" for Two Elk project: Big checks but no new jobs

Over the past two years, the federal stimulus program paid the owner of a Colorado-based energy company and the company’s Wyoming representative more than $1 million in salaries and benefits for a Department of Energy carbon storage study in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, according to records obtained by WyoFile under the Freedom of Information Act. Federal pay invoices show that Michael J. Ruffatto, founder and CEO of North American Power Group Ltd., based in Greenwood Village, CO, received $955,343.29, and Brad Enzi, NAPG’s Cheyenne-based representative and son of Wyoming US Sen. Mike Enzi, $128,394.73 for the Two Elk Energy Park Carbon Site Characterization project from September 2009, when the study began, through July 31, 2011, the last date for which records were available. According to the National Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board, Ruffatto and Enzi’s compensation is nearly 20 percent of the total spent so far on the project. Overall, the price tag of the Two Elk carbon site characterization project is nearly $10 million — $9,949,962.00. Its purpose is to determine if the sub-surface geology of the Powder River basin is suitable for storing CO2 produced by power plants and other industrial sources. The project was awarded two grants from the DOE National Energy Technology Laboratory. It is part of the Obama administration’s National Recovery Act stimulus package aimed at jump-starting the economy and creating new jobs. However, in his most recent quarterly filing to the National Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board, Ruffatto, a millionaire lawyer and philanthropist who heads the scientific project, reported that “no new direct jobs have been created for this project.”...more