Jamestown, ND – Aug 30 – Spiritwood Energy Park Association (SEPA) Friday filed its response to the lawsuit filed earlier this month by North Dakota Soybean Processors (NDSP). In the 66-page memo, the association spells out in detail NDSP’s track record of broken promises, missed deadlines and bad management decisions that have prevented the timely construction of a 125,000 Bu/day integrated soybean crush facility and refinery to produce soybean meal, refined bleached and deodorized oil, and biodiesel.

“It’s beyond outrageous that NDSP is using the legal system to obscure its epic fail in this project,” said Connie Ova, SEPA’s chief executive officer. “More than two years ago, NDSP undertook to secure $120 million in equity funding no later than March 31, 2018; just last month it still didn’t have binding commitments for that funding. It failed to timely negotiate critical agreements with us, and it failed to meaningfully work with some strategic business partners at all. It missed deadlines and repeatedly changed direction on key provisions of our agreement. When it lost confidence in its own management team, NDSP and its parent sought to use those problems as an excuse for its own poor performance.”

Ova continued: “More than three years after we first started talking about this project, we have nothing to show for it but a filing cabinet full of NDSP’s promises made and broken. Every day lost to NDSP’s failures can be measured in jobs not created and economic development unrealized. North Dakota farmers deserve better. The residents of Jamestown and Stutsman County deserve better.”

Friday’s filing was made in anticipation of a hearing next month before Judge Stephannie Stiel in the East Central District Court in Fargo. The hearing will determine if a restraining order sought by NDSP to block SEPA’s termination of the construction agreement will be continued. Since terminating its agreement with NDSP, SEPA has already entered into an exclusivity agreement with another soybean crushing plant developer.

“We believe that NDSP’s lawsuit is a deliberate, blatant effort to disrupt our relationship with our new partner,” Ova said. “NDSP’s sharp tactics convinced the Court to issue an ex parte temporary restraining order without giving us any prior notice or opportunity to correct the record. They created a misleading narrative, misapplied the law and have mounted a public relations campaign to cloud the facts. We’re confident that, with the evidence now before the Court, the record will be set straight and the way cleared to move ahead with other options.”

About Spiritwood Energy Park Association

SEPA’s sole function is to manage the Spiritwood Industrial Park, a 551-acre industrial park located approximately 10 miles east of Jamestown, North Dakota, and just south of Spiritwood, North Dakota.  The park adjoins the Great River Energy heat and power plant and its anchor tenant is Dakota Spirit AgEnergy, a 65 million-gallon-per-year biorefinery that produces ethanol, distillers’ grains and fuel-grade corn oil.

 

SEPA provides common-use transportation infrastructure, industrial lots, property management and value-added services on a fee-for-service basis to new and expanding businesses of the industrial park.  The association is majority-owned and operated by the Jamestown/Stutsman Development Corporation with Great River Energy being the minority owner. JSDC was organized to develop employment, improve business conditions, and advance the interests of the City of Jamestown and Stutsman County, North Dakota, by implementing and sustaining an organized effort to attract new business and industry, support existing business and industry, and encourage new business starts.

Previously…

Jamestown  (CSi) In an order, issued Tuesday Aug 13, the Cass County District Court entered a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction prohibiting the Spiritwood Energy Park Association (SEPA)  from terminating the agreement with North Dakota Soybean Processors.

On July 24 this year,  the SEPA  exercised its option to terminate a Key Terms Agreement with ND Soybean Processors for a planned soybean crushing plant at Spiritwood, thus effectively ending the connection between NDSP and SEPA that they had entered into in 2017 for the development of a large-scale soybean-crushing facility at the Energy Park.

The court order is in response to a lawsuit NDSP filed against SEPA on August 8, 2019, seeking an injunction.

NDSP asserts that SEPA violated the terms of the development agreement it entered into with NDSP when SEPA attempted to terminate the agreement for convenience on July 24, 2019.

Also on that date,  in  Executive Session, the SEPA Board also approved a temporary exclusivity agreement with another firm for the development of an unspecified project at the SEPA industrial park.

The court order also prohibits SEPA from entering into a new agreement with another entity for the purposes of  developing, constructing, or operating a soybean-crushing facility in or adjacent to the Spiritwood Energy Park.

The temporary restraining order remains effective until a further order of the Court.  A hearing in the case is scheduled for Sept. 4 in Fargo.

NDSP  states that it remains ready, willing, and able to proceed with the  $287 million soybean crushing facility at the Spiritwood Energy Park, and to aggressively protect its rights embaling NDSP  to proceed to construct what would be the only farmer-owned soybean-crushing facility in North Dakota.