Ecton Lawrence "Ji" Billiot Jr.
July 7, 2008
Jaime Pineda
July 11, 2008Sustainable Fuels, a New Iberia biofuel company, will start producing biodiesel made from vegetable oil and brown grease at a processing plant at the Port of West St. Mary beginning in January.
“It’s just trash, basically,” that is being refined, said company co-owner Mike Valls, a former oil industry executive. “It’s not ethanol.”
The company is receiving a $4 million federally-guaranteed loan through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development program to purchase machinery and equipment for the new facility, which is expected to produce five million gallons of biodiesel annually. Fifteen new jobs will be created.
The company will collect food products to refine from the ports of New Orleans and Houston, as well as grease from restaurants in Lafayette, Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
Oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico use diesel to run on, as do the boats servicing the rigs.
