Premium ContentClick on Premium Content on the Featured navigation bar for information.
A proposed pipeline to send ethanol from the Midwest to markets in the East may receive a boost when the U.S. Department of Energy on Monday releases the findings of a feasibility study.
The study found that a dedicated ethanol pipeline would be feasible under certain conditions, particularly if U.S. markets were opened to fuel blends containing more than 10 percent ethanol or if use of E85 — a motor fuel with up to 85 percent ethanol — were expanded.
Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., said the report is good news for the project. Terry and Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa, recently introduced a bill that would provide federal loan guarantees for the $3.5 billion, 1,800-mile pipeline.
Terry cited lower fuel costs as a reason that U.S. policy is advancing to the higher use of ethanol, with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency signaling interest in mandating fuel blends of at least 15 percent ethanol.
Terry said the findings should help lead to a vote before year’s end.
“A pipeline is the best way to get biofuels from Point A to Point B, so the fact that the Department of Energy would reach that conclusion is no real surprise,” Terry said. “Now it should be much easier to get this bill passed.”
The bill by Boswell and Terry would extend to ethanol pipelines the same types of federal loan guarantees available to oil and gas pipeline projects. Backers say those guarantees are critical to making the project a reality.
Magellan Midstream Partners, a Tulsa, Okla., pipeline company, and Poet Ethanol Products, a major ethanol producer based in Sioux Falls, S.D., are working on the proposed pipeline, which would extend from Mitchell, S.D., to shipping terminals in New York. They hope to have it operational by 2015.
The pipeline would cross Iowa and include three tank farms in Iowa — including on near Hartley — where Nebraska and Iowa ethanol producers could get products into the line.
It would be the first U.S. pipeline built exclusively for ethanol. The original proposal included a 20-inch pipe carrying 3.6 billion gallons of ethanol per year. The study estimated that the pipeline would need to carry 4.6 billion gallons of ethanol per year to be feasible.
Terry said he was confident that designers could adjust the size of the pipe to fit that requirement.
The report also said the pipeline would enhance the fuels-delivery infrastructure, reducing rail, truck and barge congestion and greenhouse gas emissions.
Terry said the pipeline is an idea that can easily garner bipartisan support.
“Whether you are a Republican or Democrat from the Midwest, you want to be part of a plan to make the U.S. less dependent on foreign oil,” Terry said.
Contact the writer:
444-1272, kevin.cole@owh.com
Copyright ©2012 Omaha World-Herald®. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, displayed or redistributed for any purpose without permission from the Omaha World-Herald.
