Natchez &8212; Adams County supervisors have committed to Rentech Inc. that no other company will locate on the county-owned old Belwood Country Club site.

&8220;We&8217;re basically taking that property off the market,&8221; supervisors President Darryl Grennell said. &8220;Things are moving forward with that project.&8221;

Colorado-based Rentech has announced interest in building a coal gasification plant at the Belwood site. The plant would produce a clean-burning diesel fuel by heating coal, capturing the gas released and cooling it to a liquid. The process is contained, and byproducts include fertilizer.

The Belwood site is attractive to Rentech because of its proximity to the river, company officials said. Rentech would ship coal down river from Illinois, where it has plans for a similar plant.

Rentech would invest $650 million in the project and employ 200 people, although the construction phase could employ up to 1,500 people over four years.

Natchez-Adams County Economic Development Authority Chairman Woody Allen said the option agreement is a good sign the project is moving forward.

&8220;That&8217;s a good first step that somebody has committed to it,&8221; Allen said. &8220;That project is under way.&8221;

Rentech officials said earlier this fall they would like to fast-track the Natchez project if possible, getting it online by 2010.

But part of the project is also dependent on federal and state incentives, officials have said.

Rentech would use a patented, advanced 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 diesel fuel that would be produced by the plant, and Rentech officials have also said there would be a market among First Responders.