• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Headwaters Incorporated, Great River Energy Announce Executive Committee, General Manager for Blue Flint Ethanol, LLC

Posted on: Friday, 17 March 2006, 09:00 CST

Headwaters Incorporated and Great River Energy today announced that John Baird of Headwaters Energy Services Corp. and John Weeda of Great River Energy will serve as a two-person executive committee that will govern all activities for Blue Flint Ethanol, LLC.

The new state-of-the-art $85 million Blue Flint Ethanol plant is under construction on land adjacent to Great River Energy's Coal Creek Station near Underwood, N.D.

Baird currently serves as vice president of liquid fuels for Headwaters Energy Services. He joined Headwaters in August of 2004 as corporate counsel assigned to large capital projects. Baird has practiced law for over 20 years during which time he focused on commercial transactions, finance and banking, and negotiated dispute resolution. He is a former senior partner in the Salt Lake City law firm of Corbridge, Baird & Christensen.

Weeda currently serves as plant manager for Great River Energy at Coal Creek Station and has spent the past 28 years in various engineering and management roles with Great River Energy and Cooperative Power Association. During that time he has overseen several large projects in addition to the operation of Coal Creek Station. Innovations by his staff at Coal Creek Station have led to development of a proprietary coal drying technology using waste heat and maximizing the use of capacity from the power production cycle at Coal Creek Station to produce ethanol.

Headwaters Incorporated also announced that Jeff Zueger has been named chief operating officer and general manager of Blue Flint Ethanol.

Zueger has worked in the electrical power generation industry for 13 years. He joined Great River Energy's Coal Creek Station in 1995 where he has worked in the engineering and operations groups and was part of the power plant's leadership team. Zueger is a registered professional engineer in North Dakota.

As general manager, Zueger will oversee all areas of business management and facilities operations of Blue Flint Ethanol. This will initially include oversight of construction and start up of Blue Flint Ethanol. Once the plant is operational, Zueger will have oversight of all commodity management, business relationships and process plant operations.

Through their respective subsidiaries' membership interests in Blue Flint Ethanol, LLC, Headwaters Incorporated is the majority owner of the plant, while Great River Energy is a minority owner and a service provider

The ethanol plant will maximize the use of capacity from the power production cycle at Coal Creek Station as part of the process to make ethanol. This will result in a very efficient plant and lower emissions than a "stand-alone" plant.

Blue Flint Ethanol will produce 50 million gallons of ethanol per year and will require 18 million bushels of corn per year, with much of it coming from local and southeast North Dakota farms. The plant would also produce enough dried or wet distillers grain for approximately 225,000 feeder cattle on an annual basis.

The economic impact of the plant will be significant as it will require 300 jobs during construction and about 37 jobs when operating. The economic impact of the plant will be about $160 million on an annual basis. The plant will begin operation in the first quarter of 2007.

Great River Energy (www.greatriverenergy.com) is a not-for-profit electric generation and transmission cooperative providing wholesale electric energy and related services to 28 distribution cooperatives in Minnesota and Wisconsin serving more than 600,000 members, or approximately 1.7 million people. Great River Energy is the second largest power supplier in Minnesota, in terms of generating capacity, and the fourth largest utility of its type in the United States.

Headwaters Incorporated (www.headwaters.com) is a world leader in creating value through innovative advancements in the utilization of natural resources. Headwaters is a diversified growth company providing products, technologies and services to the energy, construction and home improvement industries. Through its alternative energy, coal combustion products, and building products businesses, the company earns a growing revenue stream that provides the capital needed to expand and acquire synergistic new business opportunities.

Source: Business Wire

More News in this Category