Sharon Creek Ventures

What the $3 billion Longview SAF project needs before it can be built

Northwest Advanced Bio-Fuels has a new financing partner for its $3 billion woody biomass SAF plant in Longview, Washington. Here is what the project still has to prove before construction capital follows.

Woody Biomass

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Northwest Advanced Bio-Fuels’ new financing partnership with Black Gold Equity Partners matters because it goes after the hardest money to raise in a first-of-a-kind fuel project: early development capital. That money pays for site control, engineering, and permitting before anyone will commit to construction financing. Whether the $3 billion biorefinery in Longview, Washington gets built will depend less on the headline number than on what this money pays for next. The project needs a secured site, a guaranteed conversion design, a contracted wood supply, and a buyer whose commitment survives a long schedule.

Carbon Herald reported on October 27 that NWABF has entered a strategic funding partnership with Black Gold Equity Partners for a planned woody biomass-to-sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) plant in Longview. According to the report, the partnership provides initial development funding and financial structuring. The plant would use forest slash, wood residue, and sawmill residuals, sourced partly through feedstock partnerships with local Tribes. NWABF says its fuel is designed to cut lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions by more than 90% compared with conventional jet fuel. The design also includes potential over-the-fence power sales to neighboring industrial users. Groundbreaking is targeted for late 2027, followed by a three-year construction phase.

NWABF founder Dave Smoot framed the deal around capital rather than technology:

“One of the greatest challenges facing the sustainable fuels industry isn’t technology—it’s access to capital. Black Gold Equity Partners understands what it takes to build a project like this one. Their backing helps us move from concept to construction.”

We agree that access to capital is the main constraint for projects like this one. We would add that for woody biomass to liquid fuels, capital and technology are not separate problems. Investors price technology risk, and that risk is a large part of why early money is so hard to find.

A long road to this announcement

NWABF has worked on this concept for years. In 2019, Delta Air Lines committed $2 million to a feasibility study for a Washington facility that would turn wood residue and forest slash into SAF. In January 2020, Delta announced what it called one of the largest airline offtake agreements of its kind to buy NWABF’s fuel, if produced. Delta said the agreement anticipated production by the end of 2024. Its announcement described a process built on front-end gasification, syngas cleaning, and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, and NWABF described a plant able to produce up to 60 million gallons of SAF a year.

That production date has passed. Murrow News reporting in October 2025 traced the project’s search for a site, from an early plan near Grays Harbor to options in Longview and Oregon, and back to the Port of Longview’s 282-acre Barlow Point site, which NWABF had pursued since 2022. At the time, Smoot said a roughly $65 million development funding need was “holding everything up.” A port official said the port would be interested if the company had financing, and noted that about 20 projects had considered Barlow Point over the years. A Delta spokesperson told the reporter the partnership was still current. The project’s cost was reported at $2.4 billion then. It is $3 billion now.

The new announcement does not say how much Black Gold has committed, whether a site agreement has been signed, or which technology and engineering partners are under contract. Those details will show whether the project has moved from concept into development.

Why development capital is the bottleneck

Every large energy project needs money before project finance. It pays for site control, feedstock studies, front-end engineering, permitting, interconnection, and the legal work behind offtake and supply contracts. It is the riskiest money in the capital stack because it is spent before the project is certain to exist. If the project never reaches a final investment decision, most of that money is lost.

That makes development capital scarce even when construction capital is plentiful. Infrastructure funds and lenders will generally finance a project that has a site, permits, a contracted buyer, a credible engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract, and proven technology. They are much less willing to fund the work it takes to get there. Smoot’s 2025 description of a multibillion-dollar project waiting on $65 million is a clear example of that gap.

Sharon Creek founder Sam Schutte saw the same sequence as CEO and co-founder of Synthica Energy. Sam raised $80 million to build the St. Bernard facility, and after the final investment decision, he and his partners secured a significant equity investment from Goldman Sachs Infrastructure. The large institutional check followed the development work. It did not replace it. Read the St. Bernard project story.

What the next round of capital will need to see

Woody biomass gasification to liquid fuels has a difficult record at commercial scale. Red Rock Biofuels in Lakeview, Oregon, planned to turn forest slash and sawmill residuals into jet fuel using gasification and Fischer-Tropsch technology. It had fuel purchase commitments from FedEx and Southwest Airlines, a $75 million Department of Defense award, and about $300 million in tax-exempt bonds. Its bondholders foreclosed with the plant unfinished, and the new owner said it would convert the site to make renewable natural gas instead. Fulcrum BioEnergy’s Nevada plant, which gasified municipal solid waste, shut down in 2024 after defaulting on its bonds. IEA Bioenergy Task 39 reported in 2024 that commercializing biomass gasification and Fischer-Tropsch has met significant challenges, and that syngas cleanup must be tailored to each feedstock.

None of that means Longview cannot work. It means the capital providers who come after Black Gold will look hard at five questions.

Is the conversion design guaranteed by someone who can stand behind it? In 2020, NWABF said its EPC partner would offer a full construction guarantee and warranties on the technology and fuel quality. Investors will want those guarantees in a signed contract, backed by operating data from the specific gasifier and syngas cleanup design running on Pacific Northwest slash.

Is the wood supply contracted at a delivered cost the plant can carry? Forest slash is abundant, but it is spread out, varies in moisture and ash, and is expensive to collect. Tribal and commercial timber partnerships are a strong foundation. Lenders will need contracted volumes, delivered prices, specifications, and a backup plan for when a supplier cannot deliver. We cover this in more depth in When Feedstock Variability Becomes a Financing Risk.

Does the offtake still hold? Delta’s agreement is valuable, but it was signed for fuel expected by 2024. A buyer commitment that old will need current price, volume, and delivery terms before it can support debt. Fischer-Tropsch plants also typically make diesel and naphtha alongside jet fuel, so each product needs a market.

Is the site secured? Barlow Point’s deep-water access suits barging wood in and shipping fuel out. Until site control is signed and the site investigation is done, permitting and detailed engineering cannot finish.

Do the extra revenue streams have buyers? Over-the-fence power sales could add value in a region facing tighter power supply, but they need a contracted industrial customer and an interconnection plan. Until those exist, they are upside, not base case.

What this means for woody waste-to-fuel

The Pacific Northwest has the feedstock, the ports, the airline demand, and a wildfire problem that makes clearing forest residue valuable in its own right. Those advantages have existed for years. What has been missing is a project that turns them into a financeable package: guaranteed technology, contracted wood, a current offtake agreement, a secured site, and development capital patient enough to put it all together.

That is the gap Sharon Creek works in. We advise energy founders on sequencing feedstock, offtake, and capital, and we are forming a fund to invest development capital at this stage. Black Gold’s backing is a meaningful step for NWABF. Whether the project now reaches signed site control and a guaranteed engineering contract will show if it is enough.

For our broader view of the sector, see Woody waste-to-fuel and What Makes a Waste-to-Fuel Project Financeable?

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