"Port turns to courts to settle debt with biofuels company"

Hopefully, the Losonoco fiasco will dissuade Whitman County from participating any further in the Great Biofuel Swindle, that has caused starvation and driven up food prices worldwide in the name of the Goracle and his Church of the Boiling Planet.

From Friday's Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

The Port of Whitman County is preparing to take legal action against Losonoco following the biofuels company's continued failure to pay off the remainder of its lease.

The Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based company had planned to construct a $10 million oilseed crushing plant at the Port of Wilma, but Port Properties and Development Manager Debbie Snell said it hasn't made a payment on its lease since January.

Losonoco signed a 10-year lease with the port in 2007, agreeing to pay $24,150 per year for rights to 10.5 acres, and an additional $2,300 a year for the right of first refusal on an additional 10 acres of land at the site. The company also expected to hire a local staff of about 20 full-time employees, in addition to employing many temporary construction workers to build its facilities.

Snell said the company still owes approximately $12,000 on the lease.

"Basically, we just have not been able to put the economics together to close out the lease," she said.

The port sent a default letter to the company in early May, giving Losonoco a June 30 deadline for payment. The port extended the deadline to July 8 after company officials indicated they would not be able to make payment at that time.

Snell said the company has now failed to meet the new deadline, forcing the port to initiate the legal process to recover the money.

"If they make payment soon then this will all mean nothing," she said. "They've assured me that they are trying to make the payment, but have to wait until they receive proceeds from an equipment sale before they can do so."

Snell said she believes the company has acted in good faith but that economic conditions in the commodities market have turned the Port of Wilma plans into an unrealistic option.

"They just got broadsided," she said. "Now it's just a matter of moving on and finding the right fit for a new tenant."

Daily News calls to a number listed for the company's Fort Lauderdale headquarters were not answered.

Global Warming Story of the Day

Chilly spring delays strawberries, other local produce; The calendar may say summer, but it's still spring to crops confused by this year's unusually cold temperatures and rainy weather

And yet the Governor of Washington wants our farmers to grow food to burn as gas to reduce "global warming."

Losonoco Follow-Up

Just a follow-up to the story about biofuel firm Losonoco deciding not to build a canola oilseed crushing processing plant at the Port of Wilma in Whitman County.

According to the Associated Press, this decision was made because Palouse farmers are not going to grow canola when wheat recently traded around $20 a bushel.

Ironically, this surge in wheat prices is being cause by wheat growers in other states switching their crops over to corn to make ethanol.

"Biofuels firm fails to make lease payments to port"

I wonder if nationwide we're going to see the wheels start to come off the biofuel craze as the starvation that results from burning food spreads.

I normally support any business in Whitman County, but I can't say I'm sad to see this deal fall through.

From yesterday's Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

Plans to construct a $10 million oilseed crushing plant at the Port of Wilma in Whitman County appear to be shelved for now.

Port Properties and Development Manager Debbie Snell said Losonoco, an international biofuels company based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., is nearly six months delinquent in its biannual lease payments to the port.

Losonoco signed a 10-year lease with the port in 2007, agreeing to pay $24,150 per year to for rights to 10.5 acres, and an additional $2,300 a year for the right of first refusal on an additional 10 acres of land at the site. Losonoco also was expected to pay a 12.48 percent leasehold tax to the state, which basically amounts to a renter's tax.

Snell said the company's most recent lease payment was due in January.

Losonoco's failure to comply with terms of the lease prompted the port commission to have port staff draft a default letter that was sent to the company last week, Snell said.

"We will be pursuing a close out of the lease in some way, shape or form," she said.

Snell said the port is waiting to hear from Losonoco officials before moving forward. It is likely that the two sides will negotiate a lease buyout or transfer to another company that would fit with the port's overall goals and vision.

"The ball's in their court," Snell said. "I am hoping the negotiations can come where it is a win-win for everyone.

"The process doesn't happen quickly," she added. "There's a lot of things to go through."

Losonoco Chief Operating Officer Don Markley declined to comment.

The potential loss of the tenant won't be overly detrimental to the port, although it will mean the county won't benefit from the company's estimated $100 million in expected annual sales.

Whitman County Commissioner Michael Largent said he always is disappointed when development in Whitman County fails, and the county stood to potentially benefit from increased tax revenues.

Largent said the county's budgets won't be affected by the situation.

"Whitman County certainly does not budget on what is expected to come," Largent said. "Certainly one would want to realize those local tax dollars before spending them."

Losonoco expected the plant to be capable of handling 12,000 tons of canola a day in its initial stages and producing 35 million to 40 million gallons of biodiesel per year once it became fully operational.

The company also expected to hire a local staff of about 20 full-time employees, in addition to employing many temporary construction workers to build its facilities.

"It is a disappointment," Snell said. "We lease land to companies like Losonoco to create economic development and jobs in Whitman County. It's unfortunate because what we really want is the increased business."

Happy Earth Day Al Gore

Investor's Business Daily really hits the nail on the head with its Earth Day editorial today.

Shortage: Al Gore sees no climate improvement since he made "An Inconvenient Truth." Actually, things have gotten worse. As the environmentalists celebrate Earth Day, the rush to replace fossil fuels threatens global famine.

A week after Tax Day, April 15, we are forced to endure another indignity, Earth Day, April 22. This Earth Day finds the world threatened not by rising sea levels, but by rising food prices. Many on the planet are more likely to starve than drown, and we have only Gore's disciples to blame.

In an interview with the British paper The Sun, the jolly green giant whined: "I have to say the situation has not improved since I made the movie in 2006." The polar bears, he says, are still going to drown, and boats will soon be moored to the top of the Washington Monument.

To be sure, we're setting weather records, but they're not what Gore has in mind. Record cold temperatures have occurred over the globe this winter, and the only concern about flooding is from record snowfalls across the planet.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon recently warned of a more imminent threat, one ironically created by the rush to save the planet. Speaking in Accra, Ghana, the U.N. chief said the world must drastically increase food production to ease skyrocketing prices that have caused food riots in countries like Cameroon, Burkina Faso and Haiti.

The production of food grains has increased. But it is being diverted to empty gas tanks, not empty stomachs. Gore and others have warned that climate change is an imminent threat to the world. We would argue that climate-friendly policies are more of a threat.

The Gore-induced rush to biofuels has diverted crops such as corn, soybeans and palm oil from food to fuel. Vast swaths of rain forest in places like Malaysia and Indonesia have been cleared to provide farmland not to feed the hungry but to fuel our cars. Our own grain belt has been increasingly diverted to ethanol over corn flakes.

This has pressured food prices while damaging the environment. In the U.S., more cultivation has increased runoff from pesticides and fertilizer, creating dead zones for aquatic life from Chesapeake Bay to the Gulf of Mexico.

As Indur M. Goklany of the Cato Institute reports, agricultural expansion leads to higher releases of carbon from biomass and soil above and below ground. Fertilizers that increase yields also increase nitrogen discharge into waters and emissions of nitrous oxide — a greenhouse gas that heats the atmosphere 300 times more effectively than carbon dioxide.

According to World Bank data, as of March, world grain prices had tripled and fertilizer prices had quadrupled since 2000. Food prices have risen an astounding 65% just since the beginning of this year.

"Climate-change remedies can lead to greater poverty, starvation and disease, as well as widespread ecological destruction — some of the very misfortunes that they're supposed to prevent," Goklany wrote in the New York Post. "In our haste to address global warming, we have yet to think seriously about our policies' unintended effects."

In his 1968 book "The Population Bomb," Paul Ehrlich warned of famine and mass starvation from overpopulation. Ironically, that might yet occur, not from overpopulation, but from overzealousness in trying to save Earth from a nonexistent threat.

Happy Earth Day, Al.