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From a
story by Marv Balousek in the
Wisconsin State Journal:
High soybean oil prices have halted construction of the North Prairie Productions biodiesel plant in Evansville, making the end product too expensive compared with the pump price for regular diesel.
The going rate for soybean oil, the raw material for biodiesel, is about 45 cents a pound or $3.60 a gallon, more than double the price when the plant was proposed, said John Sheehy of Sun Prairie, board chairman of North Prairie Productions.
He said biodiesel would have to sell for $4.50 a gallon to justify the current price of soybean oil. Regular diesel fuel was selling for $3.49 a gallon Monday in the Madison area, according to MadisonGasPrices.com. A gallon of soybean oil makes a gallon of biodiesel, Sheehy said.
The $42 million plant would have been the largest in the state, producing an estimated 45 million gallons of biodiesel a year. Biodiesel is a substitute for diesel fuel used by farm tractors and some trucks and cars.
Sheehy said if soybean oil prices go down or diesel fuel prices look like they're going up for an extended period, construction could resume, possibly as early as next spring.
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