04/11/08 Iogen's Idaho future?

For several years Iogen has talked about possibly building a cellulosic ethanol plant near Idaho Falls. Lately company officials haven't been saying much of anything. Senator Larry Craig went to Ottawa earlier this week to talk with Iogen officials and Craig came away from the meeting with a feeling that Idaho's still in the running with construction possibly as early as next year. Idaho Grain Producers president Matt Gellings was on that same tour with Craig. He said the meeting needed to take place and he expects Iogen to communicate with growers shortly. GELLINGS "The way our guys are looking at it no news is not good news. So you need to get a letter out to these growers, do some sort of a media campaign in Idaho to say 'look guys we're still coming. You know the Department of Energy is dragging their heals on these loan guarantees.' There's a lot of different options out there. We've never seen commodity prices like this. The dairy guys are coming over to eastern Idaho right now and saying 'look we need straw and fertilizer prices are high and we have compost. We'll trade ya.'" Gellings says many eastern Idaho growers who signed contracts with Iogen three years ago to provide straw don't feel they're valid today while others are looking to other options. We made several efforts to get comments from Iogen officials for this story but none would return our calls. Today's Idaho Ag News Bill Scott