Shelved expansion plans to double capacity of Suncor Energy’s corn ethanol facility south of Sarnia, Ont. are back on, the company announced Friday.
The previously announced $120 million construction project, which Suncor put on hold in January and told reporters was to be delayed until 2010, is now expected to be completed in late 2010 or early 2011, the company said.
The planned expansion is expected to double ethanol production capacity at Suncor’s St. Clair ethanol facility to 400 million litres per year.
The planned expansion, when operational, would also double the three-year-old facility’s need for corn feedstock to 40 million bushels, the company said.
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Its current uptake of 20 million bushels, which the company said is sourced from local growers, is equivalent to about 10 per cent of Ontario’s corn crop, Suncor said.
The announcement came on the same day Suncor received confirmation of $109.97 million in biofuel incentive funding through the federal ecoEnergy for Biofuels program.
The funding, announced Friday by local MP Pat Davidson, stems from the contribution agreement Suncor originally got on Dec. 3, 2008 from Natural Resources Canada. That agreement is based on the St. Clair facility’s current nameplate production capacity of 198 million litres of ethanol per year.
Suncor has said its St. Clair plant has contributed to the development of a “competitive domestic industry” for biofuels, backed by Suncor’s blending of ethanol into its Sunoco gasoline sales volumes at up to 10 per cent in Ontario.
The St. Clair plant produces ethanol for blending into Suncor-owned Sunoco gasoline.
Calgary-based Suncor in August completed its merger with Petro-Canada to create Canada’s biggest energy company and the fifth largest North American-based energy firm by market value.
The ecoEnergy fund, which the government said is intended to “help stabilize the Canadian renewable fuel industry,” has a budget of $1.5 billion over nine years to fund biofuel production through to the end of March 2017.
The program has so far signed contribution agreements with 23 companies, which will be entitled to incentives for up to seven consecutive years.
