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Virginia lays claim to first East Coast soy biodiesel plant
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This page is sponsored by Atlantic Tractor
11 locations to serve all your agricultural needs! Click on the logo to visit their web-site. |
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Virginia lays claim to first East Coast soy biodiesel plant
10.12.04
By JOHN FULTON LEWIS
Delaware farmers may be celebrating the opening of Mid-Atlantic Biodiesel Inc., but despite the headline at the end of September, it is not the first such refinery on the East Coast. Maybe a reasonably close second, if there truly are no others, unannounced and operative, between Maine and Florida’s Keys. But very definitely Delaware’s not the first.
Since March 2004, Virginia BioDiesel Refinery, LLC has been operating at West Point, Va., in the Middle Peninsula.
The contract for building a refinery in the Commonwealth was signed in July 2003. The operation is still limited, supplying soy-based biodiesel to a small number of distributors, but that number is increasing every week as the fall harvest gets under way in the Old Dominion and as heating oil costs are expected to climb with conventional petroleum this winter.
The 2,400-square feet refinery building was the first tangible result of a request dating back nearly 10 years. That was when Bill Taliaferro and his brothers at Montague Farms in Center Cross, Va., long admired for their innovations and research in grain and soybean farming and marketing, urged that a feasibility study of biodiesel production in Virginia be conducted by the Virginia Soybean Association.
It was worth looking into, Bill Taliaferro insisted, because he foresaw that America’s energy and environmental requirements were very likely to make biofuels increasingly attractive, in competition with fossil fuels, both in price and as an easily renewable, home-grown, resource.
It was also noted, as the study proceeded, especially since 1998, that Virginia farmers were ideally situated to take advantage of the fact and strongly supportive of the idea.
Into the picture at that point came an enthusiastic and enterprising executive long associated with the petroleum industry in the Commonwealth. His name: Douglas Faulkner, part owner of Noblett, Ware & People’s Oil and Propane, headquartered in Kilmarnock, Va., which serves petroleum products to all five counties of the Northern Neck plus Essex County in the Middle Peninsula.
Unlike some in the oil industry, who are happy with status quo positions, Faulkner believes U.S. energy policies and plans are in the dark ages of development for meeting the needs of the 21st Century in terms of alternative fuels and an end to dependence on foreign sources of supply.
In fact, Faulkner argues persuasively that U.S. consumption of oil, certainly that which comes from Muslim countries, most likely now significantly helps finance the Islamic terrorist movement as represented by al-Qaida, Hamas and a dozen — maybe more — violence-prone groups from North Africa, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and east to Afghanistan, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Then he directs an interviewer’s attention to the fact that with Virginia soybean farmers steadily producing abundant crops, shipping same to Perdue’s Virginia processing plant where soy meal and soy oil are extracted, and with the soy oil and reduced amounts of regular diesel oil trucked over to the new West Point soy biodiesel refinery for blending, an impressive percentage of Virginia’s combustion engine costs are recycled purely for the benefit of all Virginia consumers.
“Once the public has easy access to soy-based biodiesel supplies, much of the money to meet our motor needs will stay right here in Virginia and America, not overseas to buy weapons for terrorists to use against us. It not only makes good economic sense and good environmental sense. It makes good national security sense,” he adds.
Faulkner reaffirms soybean farmer claims that biodegradable fuels are non-polluting to air, soil and water. “Also, soy biodiesel extends the life of your engine thanks to its lubricity. Soy biodiesel also acts as a solvent for cleaning engine parts with one’s bare hands without any adverse consequences. And, of course, when it burns, soy biodiesel reduces carcinogens in the atmosphere.”
He emphasizes the fact that every gallon of soy biodiesel used reduces petroleum imports from overseas by one gallon and that its use reduces the need to pull hydrocarbons out of the earth and send them into the atmosphere.