| DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- Terra Industries Inc. is reopening
most of the plants it shut down in December, providing a significant boost
to U.S. fertilizer production that was cut by nearly 40 percent.
The Sioux City-based company cut two-thirds of its North American
ammonia production when it shut down plants in Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma
and Texas, citing high natural gas prices that made its products
unprofitable.
Natural gas prices that reached $10 per million Btu last month have
dropped to $7 per million Btu, and the company now is back up to 77
percent of its 3 million ton capacity, said Mark Rosenbury, senior vice
president.
The company reopened its Woodward and Verdigris plants in Oklahoma this
week. The Sioux City plant restarted Jan. 9. Rosenbury said the Beaumont,
Texas plant will remain idle, depending on future natural gas, methanol
and ammonia prices. The Blytheville, Ark., plant also will remain shut
down until some equipment is replaced in March.
None of the workers were laid off, Rosenbury said.
"We had them in the plants, they were working their normal
shifts," Rosenbury said. "We had them working on training,
preventive maintenance -- items such as that. We believe that's going to
pay off for us in the long run because we can get a jump on our
restart."
Officials at the Fertilizer Institute in Washington D.C. have said high
fuel prices forced ammonia manufacturers to slow production -- a move that
could lead to a shortage of fertilizer later this year.
Rosenbury said it's difficult to judge what supplies will be available
between now and July.
FARGO, N.D. (AP) -- The Northern Crops Institute and several other
groups have asked the federal Agriculture Department to release 100,000
tons of surplus sugar to use in factory-scale ethanol production tests.
The goal is to verify an earlier test that indicated sugar can
"accelerate" ethanol production in corn dry mills. Backers of
the plan also hope to shrink a pile of government-owned sugar and make
valuable fuel at the same time.
Faced with 20-year lows in sugar prices, sugar companies have forfeited
some 810,000 tons of refined sugar to the USDA's Commodity Credit Corp. in
the past several months. The government has been struggling to deal with
the surplus.
At least 10 participating factories each would receive no more than
10,000 tons of the CCC-owned sugar, said Patricia Berglund, director of
the Fargo-based Northern Crops Institute. NCI is a multistate group that
promotes the use of crops grown in the region.
Berglund said participating factories would be responsible for keeping
track of how the sugar might help the ethanol production from corn in
their dry milling plants. They also would estimate how much they would
willing to pay for sugar to produce ethanol, Berglund said.
On the Net:
Terra Industries: http://www.terraindustries.com/
The Fertilizer Institute: http://www.tfi.org/ |