energy.agwired.com

Growers of soybeans are pointing out that the process used to extract oil to make into biodiesel does not change the feed quality of soybean meal.

The Missouri Soybean Merchandising Council is reminding livestock producers they don’t have to cut out soybean meal just because the demand for soybeans has increased:

Crushing soybeans for biodiesel does not change the meal consistency. When soybeans are processed for biofuels, they go through the same extraction process as they do when they’re crushed to extract oil for other purposes. Extracting the oil from a soybean leaves the soybean meal as a high protein feedstock. This soybean meal remains relatively consistent for livestock and poultry producers whose operations consume more than 98 percent of the domestic soybean meal used in the United States.

“As a soybean farmer, the boost in biodiesel production is really exciting,” says Todd Gibson from Norborne, Mo., who serves as chairman of the Missouri Soybean Merchandising Council (MSMC). “The soybean checkoff has been working hard to make biodiesel a viable fuel source. We also realize the concerns of our animal production neighbors about what biofuels may do to the cost and quality of their feed supplies. For us, biodiesel represents a win-win situation. We have a greater demand for soybean oil, and we have a large amount of high-quality, consistent soybean meal to supply to the feed industry, our number one customer of soybean meal.”

Smiling Earth Energy, the company that is proposing to build a 320-million-gallon biodiesel plant along the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia, is being sued by an Oregon biodiesel company for failing to provide the promised $310 million in financing for a West Coast biodiesel plant… and then refusing to return a $100,000 deposit to the Oregon company.

This story in the Virginian-Pilot says TerraFuels Inc. is claiming Smiling Earth reneged on an agreement to provide a loan for 85 percent of the capital costs needed to build a plant in Oregon and did not secure an agreement for the palm Oil TerraFuels was suppose to use as the biodiesel feedstock:

Tracy Livingston, TerraFuels’ president, said Thursday he has repeatedly tried to recover the $100,000 given to Smiling Earth, but the company wouldn’t give him the names of the suppliers that were allegedly paid.

“I’m out $100,000,” Livingston said. “That makes me very unhappy. I’d like to get my money back.”

Bernie Mock, Smiling Earth’s top executive, did not return a reporter’s phone call Thursday, but he sent an e-mail about the $100,000 early Friday.

“TerraFuels signed a contract and made a deposit for SE-Energy to build them a plant,” Mock wrote. “The deposit became nonrefundable past a certain date. That date has passed.”

The news comes as the only Smiling Earth official who has experience running a biodiesel plant for an undisclosed reason. The Chesapeake City Council recently voted to let the project go forward, despite some misgivings about Smiling Earth’s background. The latest revelation prompted the mayor to call the lawsuit serious but would not comment until he got more information.

The United States and the European Union… at odds over some biodiesel issues… are expected to sign a deal that would set international standards for trading biofuels, which senior U.S.diplomats say will give a boost to jatropha-based biodiesel in the world market.

As you might remember from a previous post of mine on October 24th, the EU is threatening a World Trade Organization complaint over American subsidies on biodiesel ($1-a-gallon biodiesel mixture credit) that the Europeans claim artificially reducing the price of biodiesel sold in Europe by about 60-90 cents a gallon… compared to what European biodiesel goes for. But this article in the UK-based Guardian says now the Americans and Europeans seem to be agreeing on some international standards to be hashed out at the new Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC) in Washington on November 9:

The agreement would be a significant boost to efforts by biodiesel producers such as D1, chaired by former Shell chairman Lord Oxburgh and partnered by BP, to refine thousands of tonnes of oil produced from the seeds of the jatropha curcas grown in poor, dry soil in Africa and the Caribbean as well as India.

Last month D1 cut back its expansion plans, including an increase in refining capacity at a Merseyside plant to 320,000 tonnes by the end of 2008, because of subsidised imports of soya-based biodiesels from the US. The European Biodiesel Board, a trade group of EU producers, has threatened legal action over the $1 a gallon subsidies for biodiesel. US exports to the EU have soared from 90,000 tonnes in 2006 to 700,000 tonnes so far this year. The EU has set a target of 10% use of biofuels by 2020 as part of its campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20%. [C Boyden Gray, US ambassador to the EU] accused the EU in turn of precluding other feedstocks for biofuel in favour of rapeseed oil – prompted, he claimed, by the German farming lobby.

The plan is also seen as a response to environmental concerns of the Europeans using palm oil (which causes deforestation) and the Americans producing ethanol from corn.