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<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 North Dakota natural gas production and crop yields will\nconverge at a proposed fertilizer plant at Spiritwood<\/span>. CHS Inc. recently announced plans to build a $1.2 billion fertilizer plant, converting natural gas from the Bakken into anhydrous ammonia, urea and liquid fertilizer.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It is a win-win for the North Dakota energy industry and the
\nstate’s farmers and ranchers, especially if it brings down the
\nprice of fertilizer and improves availability.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Presently, companies flare or burn off 30 percent of the natural
\ngas produced in the state. It happens because the infrastructure
\nfor gathering natural gas, processing and shipping it has not grown
\nas quickly as exploration and production. It’s also because the
\nprice of natural gas is very low, which makes investment in the
\ninfrastructure hard to come by.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Although flaring is better for the environment than releasing
\nnatural gas into the atmosphere, it wastes energy. In mature
\nnatural gas fields elsewhere, most of the gas is captured and sold.
\nFlaring accounts for less than 10 percent of production.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The CHS fertilizer plant<\/span> will create in-state demand for natural
\ngas, giving companies here another reason to capture gas and ship
\nit. The plant will produce fertilizer for a multistate region.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Unfortunately, the plant isn’t expected to begin production
\nuntil sometime in 2016.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The pro-farmer relationship between natural gas and fertilizer
\nis similar to proposals to refine crude oil into diesel fuel, which
\nis much in demand as a fuel for tractors and other farm equipment.
\nIt’s not unusual for the state to see shortages of diesel fuel
\nduring planting and harvest seasons. Several diesel refineries are
\nin the works for western North Dakota.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 North Dakota benefits many times over when the state can take
\nraw natural resources and put them to work supporting production
\nagriculture. It creates an economic model that gives an advantage
\nto the state’s ag producers.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The company will spend $10 million on engineering studies for<\/span>
\nthe plant. The present financing package for the fertilizer plant<\/span>
\nwill be a mix of owner’s equity, debt and third-party equity.<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 CHS is the nation’s largest farmer-owned cooperative. And the
\nSpiritwood plant is believed to be the largest single private<\/span>
\nsector development in the state’s history.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0The Bismarck Tribune. Sept. 18, 2012 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Make the most of N.D. resources \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 North Dakota natural gas production and crop yields will converge at a proposed fertilizer plant at Spiritwood. CHS Inc. recently announced plans to build a $1.2 billion fertilizer plant, converting natural gas from the Bakken […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4297,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,14,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-jamestown","category-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4278"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4303,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4278\/revisions\/4303"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}