Valero Says Fire Extinguished at Indiana Ethanol Plant

A fire at an ethanol plant in southern Indiana was extinguished quickly on Monday, owner Valero Energy Corp told Reuters on Tuesday, and ethanol industry sources said the facility could be down for as long as a week.

 

There were no injuries in the fire early on Monday at the 110 million-gallon-a-year plant in Mount Vernon, Valero spokesman Steven Lee said. He declined to elaborate on the facility's operations.

 

A source familiar with the operations said the plant would be idled for at least a few days in order to repair a grain dryer where the fire occurred.

 

One corn supplier to the plant said Valero was not currently accepting grain deliveries that it had purchased.

 

The dryer is one of two at the plant used for distillers' dried grains (DDGs), an animal feed that the company loads on barges on the lower Ohio River.

 

Fires are relatively common in grain dryers and are viewed as less damaging to the overall operation than a blaze in equipment used to make ethanol, where biofuel producers make most of their profit, the sources said.

 

A shutdown in Mount Vernon would likely have only a short-term impact on the ethanol and feed markets, they said. With ethanol supplies the largest in nearly a year, other U.S. ethanol makers were also expected to reduce their rates of production in the coming weeks due to poor profit margins.