Terry McAuliffe sought to create jobs with biofuel venture in Southside Virginia State and county economic development officials said his company is still in talks about a possible venture, but to date, nothing has been finalized by Franklin Pellets or any other entity of McAuliffe's at the site. In February 2010, before the mill's gates swung shut, McAuliffe met with the Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) about his idea, according to published reports. And in April 2011, he created Franklin Pellets and announced a "letter of intent" to study the feasibility of manufacturing wooden pellets there as a source of a renewable energy. Last fall, another McAuliffe company teamed with a Houston investment firm to sign a 20-year lease with the Virginia Port Authority for a 15-acre storage depot at the Portsmouth Marine Terminal to ship wood pellets to Europe. Authority officials hailed the deal as a significant investment. But it's unclear when that business will be operational. "They haven't done anything with the space yet," authority spokesman Joe Harris said. McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chairman who is running for governor, has said he has the business know-how Virginia needs in its chief executive. He has said his opponent, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R), is an ideologue consumed more by divisive social issues than economics. Cuccinelli's campaign has countered that McAuliffe's business experience is overstated. It has pointed to McAuliffe's founding of GreenTech Automotive, a green car company that he said would produce thousands of U.S.-made vehicles and thousands of jobs in the United States. McAuliffe quietly resigned as company chairman last year and has since distanced himself from the struggling firm amid questions about its production claims, financing and governance. The Cuccinelli campaign is now raising similar questions about McAuliffe's plans in Franklin. McAuliffe's team said this week that his partners remain engaged in "extensive business discussions" to fulfill his vision of creating a Franklin-area company that will manufacture wood pellets and ship those and other manufacturers" pellets to Europe as a source of renewable energy. "Many business deals have been negotiated for a long time," McAuliffe said in an interview Wednesday. He also suggested a deal could be reached in "a few weeks." He also said that he and his business partners have been constrained about what they can say because those negotiations are confidential. He also disputed earlier published reports about his plans for the plant. "I was not trying to buy International Paper," McAuliffe said, adding that he had only been pursuing a possible lease of the property. You don't actually buy. You do the lease deals on them or whatever, because of the environmental issues on that.