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Ethanol Plant is a Big Deal

Posted on: Tuesday, 20 September 2005, 18:00 CDT

Sep. 20--The Panda Group, a Dallas-based company known for its role in electric power generation, said Monday that it will build a 100-million-gallon ethanol plant in Haskell County.

The plant will be more than double the size of any one of the seven existing Kansas plants and will also be unique in that it will use manure from the feedlots of Haskell and surrounding counties as fuel.

Construction on the $120 million plant will begin in the first quarter of 2006, bringing an influx of between 300 and 400 construction workers to the southwest Kansas towns of Sublette and Satanta, said Todd Carter, president of Panda Development.

Construction is expected to take a year or more. About 60 to 65 full-time jobs will be created for the operation of the plant, with additional work created to haul manure and grain into the plant and take distillers grain out.

"We're excited about the jobs and the income," said Haskell County Commissioner Gene Ochs. "It will be good for this whole area and benefit a lot of entities."

Panda will haul about a billion pounds of manure a year from area feedlots and will use a heat process to gasify the manure. The gas from the process will be used to generate steam, which will power the plant.

The ethanol plant will use corn and grain sorghum as feedstock. The company plans to buy more than 40,000 bushels of grain annually, as much as possible from the local area, Carter said.

The Haskell County plant is the third manure-fired plant announced by the Panda Group in recent months. Projects in Texas and Colorado are in the early construction stages.

The company plans a total of eight plants, each with a 100-million-gallon capacity, Carter said.

The 25-year-old company is new to the ethanol business, but it is not new to power generation. It has invested more than $5 billion in power generation construction, most of it in natural gas and hydroelectric projects in Arizona and Arkansas.

"We're a green energy company," Carter said. "We believe in ethanol and the future renewable energy for America."

Carter said that goal was what pushed the company toward the manure gasification systems that will power its future ethanol plants.

"The appeal of being able to take something that has been an environmental problem (manure disposal) and use it to create energy is big with Panda," he said.

Ochs, the county commissioner, said Haskell County was thrilled that the company came with money already in hand for the project.

"We know what a struggle it's been for communities to try to raise money," he said. "This is a $120 million project. That's a lot of money."

Reach P.J. Griekspoor at 268-6660 or pgriekspoor@wichitaeagle.com [mailto:pgriekspoor@wichitaeagle.com].

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Source: The Wichita Eagle (Wichita, Kan.)

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