Poet/Magellan ethanol pipeline project gets boost from DOE study

OMAHA, Nebr. - A proposed pipeline to send ethanol from the Midwest to markets in the East received a boost on July 19 when the U.S. Department of Energy released the findings of a feasibility study.
The study found that a dedicated ethanol pipeline would be feasible under certain conditions, particularly if U.S. markets were opened to fuel blends containing more than 10 percent ethanol or if use of E85 - a motor fuel with up to 85 percent ethanol - were expanded.
Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., said the report is good news for the project. Terry and Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa, recently introduced a bill that would provide federal loan guarantees for the $3.5 billion, 1,800-mile pipeline.
Terry cited lower fuel costs as a reason that U.S. policy is advancing to the higher use of ethanol, with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency signaling interest in mandating fuel blends of at least 15 percent ethanol.
Terry said the findings should help lead to a vote before year’s end.
The bill by Boswell and Terry would extend to ethanol pipelines the same types of federal loan guarantees available to oil and gas pipeline projects. Backers say those guarantees are critical to making the project a reality.
Magellan Midstream Partners, a Tulsa, Okla., pipeline company, and Poet Ethanol Products, a major ethanol producer based in Sioux Falls, S.D., are working on the proposed pipeline, which would extend from Mitchell, S.D., to shipping terminals in New York. They hope to have it operational by 2015.

Magellan, Poet considering U.S. ethanol pipeline joint venture

TULSA, Okla. - Magellan Midstream Partners said on March 16 that it has signed a joint agreement with Poet, the largest U.S. ethanol producer, to study building a dedicated pipeline to carry the biofuel from the U.S. Midwest into the Northeast.
The proposed $3.5 billion pipeline system would gather ethanol from distilleries in Iowa, South Dakota, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio to serve terminals in major Northeastern markets.
Amid U.S. mandates calling for greater amounts of ethanol to be blended into the gasoline pool through 2022, companies are boosting efforts to see if shipping ethanol through pipelines can be a less expensive, safer alternative to sending it on trucks and trains.
Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP, one of the largest energy pipeline companies in North America, has been sending batches of ethanol through a 105-mile petroleum products pipeline in Florida.
Magellan, which owns and operates a major oil products pipeline in the Midwest, had originally announced in February 2008 it would work with Buckeye Partners LP to jointly study a large alternative fuel pipeline project. Buckeye recently decided to discontinue its role in that project.
Poet, which produces more than 1.5 billion gallons of ethanol a year from 26 plants across the Midwest, and Magellan said federal legislation revising the U.S. Department of Energy's loan guarantee program is critical for the project, which would span 1,700 miles, to move forward.

Kinder Morgan’s Plantation Pipe Line to ship biodiesel to Southeast

ATLANTA, Ga. – What is being described as a “technological breakthrough” in transporting biofuels soon will provide a new supply of bio-diesel to fuel distributors across metro Atlanta.
Kinder Morgan Energy Partners L.P. successfully tested last fall the movement of 20,000 bbls. of a biodiesel blend through the Plantation Pipeline system, which runs through northern Georgia on its way from Louisiana to Virginia, according to a report filed Jan. 21 with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Based on those results, the project could be in commercial operation on a limited basis within 30 to 60 days with full ramp-up late this year, said Mark Evans, the Houston-based company’s director of business development.
The biodiesel pipeline innovation comes on the heels of ethanol shipment by pipeline which Kinder Morgan has innovated in Florida.
The Tampa-to-Orlando ethanol project, which went on line in December, made the Central Florida Pipeline the first transmarket gasoline pipeline in the country to transport biofuel.
Until now, shipments of biofuels have been limited to trucks and trains because of problems running ethanol or biodiesel through pipelines. Evans said ethanol corrodes the pipes while biodiesel tends to contaminate other fuels that run through the system, particularly jet fuel.