Planned Ethanol Projects Vanishing into Thin Air

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--As ethanol producers continue to struggle with low ethanol prices and high feedstock prices, additional players looking to get into the game have struggled to get funding for more plants to be built. Planned ethanol projects are vanishing into thin air, and the number of cancellations and projects being put on hold continues to rise.

Click on the image at right to see a list of canceled ethanol project

Since the beginning of 2009, 69 planned ethanol and biodiesel projects have been canceled or put on hold representing billions of dollars in capital spending and a projected potential job loss of more than 3,000 positions.

Just this week alone, seven projects were put on hold or canceled. Athena Ethanol LLC (Lees Summit, Missouri) put plans on hold to build a 55 million-gallon-per-year plant that was to be located Arapahoe, Nebraska. The owners indicated that the lack of funding put the project on hold.

Missouri Energy LLC (Friesland, Wisconsin) canceled plans to build a 55 million-gallon-per-year plant that was to be built in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, because of the lack of funding.

NexGen Biofuels Incorporated (Wesley Chapel, Florida) said plans for a 100 million-gallon-per-year plant in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, have been canceled. The same goes for another project that the city of Pine Bluff lost when Delta Intermodal & Bioenergy Company (Pine Bluff, Arkansas) canceled plans to build a 30 million-gallon-per-year biodiesel plant there.

Rural Energy Marketing LLC (Luverne, Minnesota) placed plans on hold for a 12 million-gallon-per-year biodiesel plant in Luverne. First Missouri Energy LLC (Cape Girardeau) also placed plans on hold to build a 65 million-gallon-per-year plant in Scott City, Missouri. Scott City also potentially lost an additional plant when SEMO Milling LLC (Scott City, Missouri) put plans on hold to build a 138 million-gallon-per-year plant in the town.

Leading ethanol technology provider ICM Incorporated (Colwich, Kansas) is involved with more than 125 potential new-build plants in the U.S., and the company indicated that the lack of funding and the current credit crunch could spoil plans to build additional facilities in the near future.

Industrial Info's Ethanol Database provides a comprehensive outline of all current development activities in the emerging alternative fuels market. This database covers 177 ethanol plants in operation and 530 plants under development. It also covers 145 operational biodiesel plants and 245 biodiesel plants under development.

Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is a marketing information service specializing in industrial process, energy and financial related markets with products and services ranging from industry news, analytics, forecasting, plant and project databases, as well as multimedia services.