Energy Independence Comes to Nebraska

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) ...Recently, with the boom in drilling operations in Wyoming and Colorado in the Niobrara shale – and some tentative exploration of the Kleinholz field – there have been renewed hopes for a return to the days of significant production.
But Nebraska’s above-ground oil field – its corn assets and ethanol fleet – have long restored energy independence to the Cornhusker state. It’s become a Little Saudi Arabia of the prairie, with the capacity to produce 20 percent more liquid energy than it consumes.
... As the Nebraska Ethanol Board explains, “there are 24 active ethanol production plants in Nebraska, with a combined production capacity of over 2 billion gallons of ethanol each year—and requiring more than 700 million bushels of grain in the process. These ethanol plants represent more than $5 billion in capital investment in the state and provide direct employment for some 1,200 Nebraskans.”
...Now, here’s the flip side. Beef is big, even bigger than ethanol. According to the Nebraska Beef Council, “Its the state’s single largest industry and the engine that powers the state’s economy. The multiplied impact of the $6.5 billion in cattle sales each year is $12.1 billion. Nearly 5 million head are finished and marketed in Nebraska, a state with a population of 1.7 million residents.”
So, there are three head of cattle for every Nebraskan, and that means that the Renewable Fuel Standard is not universally popular here – creating competition for corn – and with severe drought affecting the United States, unhappiness has spilled over into an all-out war on the Renewable Fuel Standard...
Market forces have indeed been at work, leading to the temporary shutdown of the 44 million gallon NEDAK Ethanol plant in Atkinson, and the 120 million gallon Valero ethanol plant in Albion, reducing maximum production by 8 percent in the state – diverting roughly 475 million bushels of corn back into the feed and export grain sectors (though depriving the feed markets of a significant tonnage of protein-rich distillers grains – as ethanol producers only use the starch fraction of field corn for fuel production).
...Nebraska has the second lowest unemployment rate in the country.
...Though based on a platform of agriculture – the economic good times here have touched retail, banking, and services.
The bottom line: 6 keys to prosperity In our special Digest report last year, we identified six factors key to the economic revival, and recession resistance, or rural economies in the six states visited in our survey.
1. Investment retention. ...kept their petrodollars home, where they were reinvested in the community to foster local growth.
2. Diversification. ...
3. Good neighbors make good economies. ...
4. Targeted economic revival funding. ...
5. Connections. ...
6. Give-back to the community ...READ MORE and MORE (Biobased Digest)