Ground’s been broken on a new biodiesel plant in the Northern Missouri town of Moberly.
This story in the Moberly (MO) Monitor says the $16.5 million Producer’s Choice Soy Energy plant and soybean crushing facility could be in operation by the beginning of March 2009:
The almost 14-acre tract is filled with corn stubble today. But construction, to be done by Process Concepts of Pevely, MO, will begin soon. PCSE qualified for the Missouri Department of Agriculture’s Producer Incentive program last October. Under those guidelines, the state will pay PCSE 30-cents per gallon on the first 15 mgy of biodiesel created during the first five years of operation. One of the conditions of the incentive, however, is that the plant must be producing biodiesel by March 1, 2009. It is estimated the plant could be completed in 10 months.
Mark Johnston, the general contractor, told the gathering Friday that Process Concepts had built four such plants in Missouri. He said the Moberly facility had a better chance of success than some others he was acquainted with since the plant here would be diversified by having the crushing plant in addition to the biodiesel. The plant is estimated to produce 5 million gallons of biodiesel annually with expectations to increase that to 30 million gallons in the future. In addition, the plant will have a capacity to mechanically crush up to 250 tons of soybeans daily. The soybean crush will provide feedstock for the biodiesel conversion as well as 65,000 tons of extruded soybean meal each year.
City officials say they will provide the infrastructure and tax abatements to ensure the success of the plant.
“We’re always cautious when we review the March projections, because they are made before any seeds really enter the ground,” said Ron Litterer, NCGA president. “The corn acreage projections also have a tendency to go up. Last year, for example, there was a difference of more than 3 million acres between the March estimate and the final number.” Litterer pointed out USDA’s March report has underestimated actual corn acres in the each of the last four years.
In Michael Grunwald’s March 27 article “The Clean Energy Scam,” corn-based ethanol is the scapegoat of the week. Though Grunwald draws attention to the vitally important need for evaluation of global land-use changes, the environmental finger pointing at corn-based ethanol by his sources has come to the point of ridiculous.
The nuptials of 
VeraSun announced that the merger with US BioEnergy was approved by a majority vote of shareholders of both companies and is effective April 1, 2008.
Because we do lots of interviews and generate quite a bit of audio here at Domestic Fuel and because we are broadcasters by training, we thought it was about time we started our own podcast. 
Our first podcast features aerospace engineer and author Robert Zubrin, who has been getting some media attention lately for his book, 
USDA’s highly anticipated 
According to the 
Driver Ryan Hunter-Reay ran a great race and stayed in the top ten with all the big name drivers for the majority of the race. The 2007 Rookie of the Year was hoping for a better finish for the start of his first full season with the Indy Car Series, but he got passed up by two drivers in the final restart of the race after Tony Kanaan got knocked out of first place. Before the restart, the #17 Ethanol car was holding on to fifth place. The Homestead 300 trophy ultimately went to Scott Dixon.
Officials with the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute say biofuels will drive agriculture for at least the next 10 years.
The 79-year-old multi-billionaire was on CNBC earlier this week talking about energy, oil prices and ethanol. According to