PHILADELPHIA — Sunoco Inc. has tapped former General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson to lead the energy spin-off it is forming early next year.

Henderson, 52, is joining Pittsburgh-based Sunoco as a senior vice president and will help prepare for SunCoke Energy to split from the company's core oil refining and gasoline station business in the first half of 2011. He will then become chairman and CEO of SunCoke, Sunoco's metallurgical coke manufacturing operations.

Coke, which is produced by baking coal at extremely high temperatures to fuse together carbon and ash, is a key ingredient used to make steel. The company provides coke for steel manufacturers in the U.S. and Brazil.

SunCoke Energy's corporate headquarters are located on Parkside Drive in the Turkey Creek community of Knox County.

The company has operations in Virginia, Indiana, Ohio and Illinois. It is building a plant in Middletown, Ohio, that is slated to produce 550,000 tons of coke and 46 megawatts of electricity when fully operational in the second half of 2011. It also operates and has a stake in a 1.7 million tons-per-year coke-making operation in Vitoria, Brazil.

Henderson was appointed head of GM in March 2009, and led the automaker through a government-backed bankruptcy restructuring last year. But he was later replaced by board chairman Ed Whitacre due to concerns over the speed of GM's turnaround.

Despite leaving the GM CEO post, Henderson has since served as a consultant to the automaker.

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