08/11/08 Climate change, fuel switching and fertilizer costs

Farm and Ranch August 11, 2008 Climate change legislation, the Lieberman-Warner bill is not going anywhere in Congress this session. But Pam Guffain with the Fertilizer Institute, an industry trade organization, expects the issue will be back early next year. Guffain: "The Democrats issued a statement that they feel their best chance for climate change legislation will be very quickly in the 111th Congress. So we expect, although the rest of this year should be fairly quiet, it will come back very soon in the next session." Guffain says the key concern for the fertilizer industry regarding climate change legislation is "fuel-switching." Guffain: "If industries would say have to switch to natural gas because of the greenhouse gas emissions they save by using natural gas, then it would just put those industries that are dependent on natural gas as a feedstock in greater economic trouble. We use natural gas as a feedstock to produce ammonia and at the cost we think the natural gas will go up even more and just drive more fertilizer industries off shore." And the U.S. is now importing more than half its ammonia because of plant closures in recent years due to high natural gas prices. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.