By Robyn Rogers, Hartford News-Times Reporter
newstimes@insightbb.com
Out west of town at 600 N. Industrial Park Drive, a building sits empty. After ground was broken there last year for an ethanol plant, the site has sat mostly silent.
In October 2006, ground was broken for a planned 16-month construction phase. Construction crews haven't been spotted since last year, but officially, the project is ongoing.
Calls to Hartford Bio-Energy LLC, based in Westmont, Ill., have not been returned this week.
At a county council meeting Wednesday night, Tom Armstrong, the council's liaison to the economic development board, reported the project is still on.
Mayor Dennis Whitesell said in all of his conversations with company representatives, they indicate they still plan to build and open the ethanol facility.
Last fall, Hartford Bio-Energy applied to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management for a change in milling operations and output capacity. In February 2007 the company received an amended construction permit from Indiana Department of Environmental Management, asking for a change from a wet mill operation to a dry milling operation. The revision also asked for an increase in the maximum production rate from 63 million gallons of ethanol per year to a maximum of 115.5 million gallons.
The permit will be revoked if construction is suspended for a continuous period of one year or more, according to a letter accompanying the permit approval.
Whitesell said that company representatives have been in the existing shell building at the site, but to his knowledge there has been no construction activity during 2007.
Last week VeraSun Energy Corp., one of the largest players in ethanol refining, announced it had suspended construction of its White County facility. The company plans to restart construction in 2008 if market conditions improve.
The price of ethanol has fallen by 30 percent over the past few months, while the price of ethanol s primary component, corn, has risen. Corn is at $3.12 a bushel at Matthews Feed and Grain, up from $2.77 last October. The increase is squeezing ethanol companies profits and pushing some ethanol plants to the brink of bankruptcy, according to a story in this week's
Financing for new ethanol plants is drying up in many areas, and plans to build are being delayed or canceled across the Midwest, as investors weigh their options.
According to Blackford County Economic Development Director Dax Norton, Hartford Bio-Energy still plans to proceed with its project in Hartford City.
At this point they are in a funding stage, Norton said. People can speculate all they want, but the project is ongoing.
Complex market factors come into play when talking about ethanol. According to American Bio-Energy, an ethanol lobbying group, Congress may need to step in if oil companies don t start passing along their savings from blending ethanol. In some places throughout the nation, gasoline blended with 10 percent ethanol is selling for up to 13 cents less per gallon than regular gasoline.
However, getting the ethanol to market can be problematic. Ethanol is corrosive to the pipelines used to carry gasoline, so ethanol is usually transported in rail tankers. That makes the midwest a good place for ethanol plants because of our central location, according to Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind.
Biofuels offer the dual opportunity for an economic revitalization of rural America and a solution to a serious national security problem, said Lugar, who has been an advocate for using biofuels to decrease dependence on foreign oil.
Right now, there are ethanol plants in South Bend, Portland and Marion with an additional three plants at Rensselaer, Reynolds, and Linden that are in the construction phase. These new ethanol plants will utilize about 160 million bushels of corn, equivalent to 12 percent of Indiana s 2006 corn production, according to the Indiana Business Review, a publication of Ball State University.
Seven more plants are seeking funding. Ethanol plants are planned for Putnam, Posey, Tipton, Randolph, White and Rush counties, according to a list put out by Purdue University. The Purdue list indicates at least another ten groups considering plant sites. If all of the proposed plants are built, the demand for corn for these plants will equal approximately 80 percent of Indiana's 2006 corn production.