Saturday, March 29, 2008

SoyMor Biodiesel-Where's Some More Handouts

Friday, March 28, 2008 9:46 AM CDT

GLENVILLE — Renewable Energy Group announced this week that it is withdrawing its initial $150 million public offering because of commodity prices and adverse market conditions, which is temporarily ceasing production at SoyMor Biodiesel.

“We’re at all-time highs right now — on gold, crude oil, you name the commodity,” said Gary Pestorious, chairman of the SoyMor Board of Governors.

SoyMor announced March 14 it is suspending production of biodiesel. The plant’s 30 employees are on unemployment, Pestorious said. The board hopes to reopen the biodiesel refinery when conditions improve.

REG, based in Ames, Iowa, makes and sells a quarter of all biodiesel sold in the United States and only manages SoyMor. There are 56 owners of the Soymor limited liability company. Pestorious said REG is a large company that was going public in biodiesel but, like with SoyMor, the market makes it a tough time for prices, and it decided to wait. This decision doesn’t affect the Glenville plant, he said.

It seems the biodiesel industry is in a holding pattern, said Pestorious, while prices are making a large swing. Prices aren’t changing at 2 cents a day but changing an entire limit up or a limit down. Once the market gets comfortable with this year’s crop then maybe it will settle down, he said.

Soybean oil prices — one of the causes Pestorious noted for the halt in production at SoyMor — went down for a few days and then came back up for a few days during the past week. Prices jumped in 2007, going from 28 cents to 45 cents a pound. The Chicago Board of Trade Thursday has May’s soybean oil price at nearly 58 cents per pound.

“We’re kind of back to where we were,” Pestorious said.

Soybean oil makes up to 80 percent of operating costs for biodiesel plants, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In addition to high soybean oil prices, Pestorious said, the cost of diesel fuel and the weakened U.S. dollar contributed to the fact that SoyMor ran fewer than 15 days a month during the past four months.

Many biodiesel plants across the country have stopped production or slowed in recent months.

“Soybean oil is a big factor but it’s not the only factor,” Pestorious said. “It’s a combination of a bunch of factors that will determine when and if we start back up again.”

Pestorious said the plant will only shut down if the market stays where it is.

The Board of Governors, he said, will not fire up the plant again until it is comfortable with the economics. The board wants the market to even out before thinking about production again.

“Right now we’re at a high spike so it doesn’t work. But we also don’t think it will stay there,” Pestorious said.

“We think the market will adjust in time, and when it does and the economics work we’re back in business,” he continued. “We’ll start up again.”

The longtime record for soybean oil was 45 cents a pound in 1974, but that was shattered in 2007.

just wait, they will be crying to the politicians for more welfare money. GREEDY FREE_LOADING FARMERS!!

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Steal Your Money-Agri-business Ethanol

Ethanol is touted as the way to get off of foreign sources of energy, But that is a crock.
It is not even accepted that Ethanol production produces more energy than it requires*, and at any rate, bio-diesel, or sugar beet production are both more efficient than ethanol from corn. This is a titanic boondoggle and a huge lie and slap in the face of Americans who think they are being "Green". But someone else said it better than me, This from Vladimir on REDSTATE.Com:

Example: by mandating ethanol in our motor fuel, and by outlawing imports of ethanol refined elsewhere, we've had to deal with the impact of high levels of corn production on our ecosystem. Corn is one of the most taxing crops on the soil, and its cultivation requires large amounts of nitrogen fertilizers (derived, by the way, from natural gas). Runoff of nitrogen fertilizer is the primary culprit for the annual "Dead Zone" that forms in the Gulf of Mexico. I've seen it variously described as "the size of Connecticut" and "the size of New Jersey"; for our purposes we'll stipulate that it's the size of a densely-populated north-eastern state. An oxygen-depleted zone, it virtually wipes out commercial fishing.

* CORN ETHANOL TAKES MORE ENERGY THAN IT MAKES

ENS, USA, July 13, 2005
http://www.sarid.net/technology/050713-ethanol.htm

Berkeley, California, July 13, 2005 (ENS) - Using ethanol as an additive to make gasoline burn cleaner does more harm than good to the environment, finds a new report by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. The study concludes that the cumulative energy consumed in corn farming and ethanol production is six times greater than the power the ethanol provides in a car engine.

Beware this evil called Ethanol.

Ethanol, The last, best, hope for big profits
Ethanol, The last refuge of a scoundrel
Ethanol, Like the proverbial lilies of the field, it toils not, neither does it spin
Ethanol, Full of sound and fury, signifying, nothing
Ethanol, Crucifying America on a cross of Corn!

Monday, March 24, 2008

Ethanol=Mice and Rats

An increase in mice and rats is causing problems in some
eastern Iowa homes and ethanol could be to blame.
With the high demand for ethanol, farmers are
increasing their corn production which, in turn,
causes mice and rat populations to grow. Mice and
rat's eat and breed in corn fields, and can easily
make their way into your home through cracks in the
foundation and even dryer vents. “Just pretty much
look at the bottom of the foundation make sure all
your cracks and crevices are tied up and then it's
just a matter of, if you do have mice and rats inside
the house after you take care of the foundation, just
something as good as a good ol' snap trap,” said
Michael Jones from Hawkeye Exterminating Co.
Exterminators also recommend filling any visible holes
outside your house with steel wool, or any caulking product.

Ethanol Plants Suck!

With a flood of ethanol plants headed toward Minnesota, there's growing concern about whether there will be enough groundwater to satisfy the booming industry's thirst. The issue was brought into focus last year in Granite Falls, where an ethanol plant in its first year of operations depleted the groundwater so much that it had to begin pumping water from the Minnesota River.

It takes between four and five gallons of water to produce a gallon of ethanol at a biofuel plant, and with 17 ethanol plants now operating in the state, six under construction and 10 more proposed or in the planning stages, the threat of more drains on underground water are rising. . .

The industry is consuming about 2 billion gallons of groundwater per year, according to state estimates. That amount could quadruple by 2011 if the state's ethanol production more than doubles, as expected. . .


All told, the state's 16 ethanol plants use a total of 1.9 billion gallons of water each year to produce over 562 million gallons of ethanol. With five new plants under construction, and several others looking to expand, the state's production capacity could reach one billion gallons by 2008, requiring the use of more than 4.3 billion gallons of water. That's slightly less water than was consumed by the city of St. Cloud in 2006.

Experts say there is a significant risk that increasing ethanol production could suck groundwater dry. Already, officials in and around the Midwest are delaying or denying approval of permits for ethanol plants out of concern for the water supply.

"What you want is to protect your water supply for future population and economic growth," says Jim Japs, assistant director of the DNR's Division of Waters. "Those are the two things that drive cities. Ultimately, if you don't have the water, you're not going to have the growth."