$125M fertilizer loan fund split between two North Dakota projects, pending Industrial Commission OK – InForum

BISMARCK — A state authority voted Tuesday to split a $125 million forgivable loan between two projects that would aim to boost the fertilizer supply for North Dakota farmers.

The Clean Sustainable Energy Authority voted Tuesday, Jan. 23 to award the Prairie Horizons Energy Solutions project with $75 million and the NextEra Energy Resources project near Spiritwood with $50 million.

North Dakota’s Industrial Commission will need to give final approval to the plan. If one of the projects chooses not to accept the loan, the entire loan amount would be offered to the other project.

The loan amounts would be forgiven after the projects are completed, turning the loans into grants.

The Legislature approved the money for the loan during an October special session as a way to boost North Dakota’s agricultural industry. The bill specified that the fertilizer production facility must use hydrogen produced by the electrolysis of water.

Fertilizer is a major expense for farmers who grow corn and wheat. North Dakota is at the end of the trail for fertilizer supplies that are largely imported from other countries. Global conflicts, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and, more recently, shipping disruptions in the Red Sea, have created price swings in the fertilizer market.

The Prairie Horizon proposal is a $2.2 billion project; NextEra’s is a $1.3 billion project.

Prairie Horizon is a partnership between Marathon Petroleum and TC Energy, a Canadian pipeline company.

During the Prairie Horizon presentation, Zach Thobe of Marathon emphasized that using a combination of green energy and traditional energy makes its project “low carbon and cost competitive.”

It would be located near Dickinson where Marathon already has a renewable diesel fuel facility and is working with North Dakota’s Energy and Environmental Resource Center on the U.S. Department of Energy’s clean hydrogen hub project.

“We are in the early innings of that opportunity, but it’s got a great potential for strategic positioning for this project,” Thobe said.

The presentation from Garrett Goldfinger of NextEra Energy Resources emphasized that the location east of Jamestown near the Spiritwood Energy Park is favorable by being in the eastern part of the state, where North Dakota’s prime farmland is, and some distance away from the state’s existing fertilizer plant, which is at the Dakota Gasification Plant near Beulah.

The site also has needed access to rail and truck transportation, water from the Stutsman County Rural Water District, and the electric transmission grid.

NextEra is primarily a wind energy company, having completed several projects in North Dakota. A side benefit of the fertilizer project, Goldfinger said, is that it could ratchet down production at peak energy demand times to feed power onto the grid.

Goldfinger addressed the question about the need for hydrogen storage by saying NextEra’s process would not rely on hydrogen storage.

Prairie Horizon’s proposal received higher scores than NextEra from independent reviewers and during a Clean Sustainable Energy Authority review that included factors such as financing.

Both projects would focus on ammonia production, at least at first, but could later expand to urea, which has become more popular with North Dakota farmers.

This story was originally published on NorthDakotaMonitor.com