Domestic Fuel

Directly on the heels of last week’s groundbreaking and announcement of two more plant sites in Nebraska, Midwest Etahnol announced yet another plant site this week, this one in Blencoe, Iowa. This little town of 213 people is located very close to the Nebraska/Iowa border and the proposed plant site is 477 acres of family owned property, which John Kant, corporate director of public relations for Midwest Ethanol Producers says is ideal for the project.
“You have to be near a rail; you have to have enough corn; and you have to have enough cattle to sell the (dry distiller’s grain) to,” Kant said.

The other four Midwest Ethanol plants are in Phelps, Holt, Furnas and Dawson counties in Nebraska. Here is another picture of the Holt County groundbreaking last week, thanks to Kurt Bravo. Kurt, could you identify the folks in the photo for us?

The Ethanol Promotion and Information Council agency retreat in Omaha is over. Isn’t this a fine looking bunch?

EPIC works with a variety of agencies on different projects that includes everything from member communications to consumer awareness and education. Representatives from the various agencies came together over the last 2 days to discuss plans for the coming year.

As our primary sponsor here on Domestic Fuel we are involved in making sure we cover the organization’s activities since they’re so active on the consumer education front nationally. There’s a lot of excitement within this group as they look at how to continue to promote this energy alternative.

Hello from Omaha, NE. It’s a rare opportunity for both Cindy and I to travel together but it worked out for this meeting today with the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council. As you know, they are our primary sponsor and it’s through their efforts and support that Domestic Fuel exists.

Today we’re getting an opportunity to learn more about them and interact with other companies that are providing various types of services for them. The organization is a little over a year old and it’s time to look forward to the next year. I’m sure this will be interesting.

Lots of stories out about Archer Daniels Midland’s big fourth quarter profits on the strength of ethanol. ADM’s quarterly profit more than doubled from last year to $410 million, or 62 cents per share on “strong results from oilseed processing and ethanol.”

Overall, ADM shares have risen 77 percent this year. Earnings from its bioproducts division, which includes ethanol, catapulted to $174 million from $25 million last year.

Shoulda bought that ADM stock in January …

Here we go again – feast or famine time. Reuters is reporting that there could be a “looming glut” of ethanol ahead. Just a month ago we couldn’t produce enough.

I especially like the fact that this story is based on the predictions of one person, Fimat Energy analyst Antoine Halff, who says, “Surging capacity … poses daunting challenges for the ethanol industry, including heightened competition for feedstock and the logistical headache and costs of shipping ethanol from the Midwest to the main gasoline markets.”

Halff predicts that by the end of 2008, ethanol production capacity in the Midwest will be sufficient to replace 25 percent of Midwestern gasoline demand and he suggests that the solution to the problem will likely be the wider adoption of E85.

Sounds like good news to me.

It should come as no surprise that demand for ethanol is setting records this year.

The Renewable Fuels Association just announced the lastest available statistics to confirm that. According to RFA, May ethanol demand set a record at 349,000 barrels per day. That’s well ahead of May’s production figure of 293,000 barrels per day.

Ethanol imports were down in May from April, according to RFA President Bob Dinneen. “The decline in imports from April to May explains much of the ‘distressed’ situation we have seen in the spot market for ethanol in recent weeks,” said Dinneen. “Imports from countries like Brazil were late arriving and caused some to become unnecessarily nervous about ethanol supplies. Fortunately, the U.S. ethanol industry has grown and continues to grow at a pace sufficient to meet surging demand for this cleaner-burning, domestically-produced renewable fuel.”

At the groundbreaking ceremony for Midwest Ethanol’s O’Neill, Nebraska plant on Friday, company officials announced two more plant locations for the state. (Picture courtesy of Kurt Bravo).

The specific site locations were identified as Furnas County Ethanol, Inc. in Arapahoe, which is 30 miles southwest of Holdrege, and Dawson County Ethanol, Inc. located in Elm Creek, near Kearney, Nebraska.

Each plant will be permitted to produce 100 million gallons of ethanol each year, along with 320,000 tons of dry distillers grain(a high protein cattle feed), and will consume more than 37 million bushels of corn annually

To some people, manure is just waste. To Iowa State University researcher Samy Sadaka, it’s bio-oil. He and other researchers at ISU are working on a project to convert farm waste into bio-oil.

According to an ISU release, the project is being supported by $190,000 in grants from the Iowa Biotechnology Byproducts Consortium. The researchers are working to take wastes from Iowa farms — manure and corn stalks — and turn them into a bio-oil that could be used for boiler fuel and perhaps transportation fuel.

In the photo from ISU, Sadaka is working with his bio-drying system that is used to dry a mixture of manure and corn stalks so they can be burned to produce the bio-oil.