Kior breaks ground, and draws customers, for Columbus biofuels plant

By Garthia Elena Burnett,
May 17, 2011  

FedEx is the latest company to sign an offtake agreement with Kior, a biofuels plant slated to begin production in Columbus in 2012. FedEx plans to use oil produced from biomass, mainly wood chips, in its ground fleet.

The Hunt Oil Refinery in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and Catchlight Energy, a joint venture between Weyerhaeuser and Chevron, also have entered into agreement to use oil produced at Kior, Gov. Haley Barbour announced Thursday, during a symbolic groundbreaking at the Kior site. Work began a few months ago on the Kior site at the Columbus-Lowndes County Port.

The facility represents a $190 million local investment with more than $500 million to be invested statewide, as the company adds four more plants in Newton, southwest Mississippi and two additional locations yet to be named.

Initially, the Columbus facility will turn 500 tons of biomass a day into 11 million gallons of oil. The oil can be processed at refineries with other oil or put directly into gas tanks, Barbour said. The company plans to refine the oil into gasoline and diesel fuel blendstocks at the Columbus facility.

"This is an unbelievable accomplishment, and it's a game changer for our country," he said.

Barbour recalled when the idea was first presented to him. The notion of turning wood chips and agricultural waste into fuel sounded like the alchemists of old claiming they could turn straw into gold.

"It's almost like making gold out of straw," Barbour said of the technology, which reduces nature's process of breaking down biomass over the course of decades into a matter of seconds.

"It does sound like science fiction, even though I have explained (the process) a number of times," admitted Fred Cannon, CEO of Kior.

Kior's process cuts down greenhouse emissions by 80 percent, Cannon added.

And "Every gallon or barrel of fuel we make in Columbus is a gallon or barrel of fuel we don't have to import from another country, some of which don't like America very much," he continued.

Lowndes County Board of Supervisors President Harry Sanders was in the oil and gas business for more than 30 years before retiring, he told audience members.

His father thought he should learn every aspect of the business, including driving trucks full of oil to and from Meridian.

"I can remember seeing all the pine trees in Kemper, Oktibbeha and Lauderdale County," Sanders said. "I never in my life would have thought trucks would be hauling pine trees in a truck as a liquid, as black gold."