Photo courtesy of the United Soybean Board
BIOFUEL Demand Heats Up I
n the early 2000s, soybean farmers needed demand for their soy oil to support soybean prices. The home heating oil industry in the Northeast needed to claw its way back into a market that natural gas was overpowering. Farmers and business owners, as it turns out, needed each other. The idea of blending biodiesel with home heating oil began in Paul Nazzaro’s home office with a few other biodiesel proponents. Nazzaro’s background in the oil industry and role as a petroleum liaison for the National Biodiesel Board helps him connect the industries. If you can put biodiesel in diesel engines, why can’t it be used to heat homes, they wondered? “When we started talking about this in 2003, it wasn’t a dream — it
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was building on an understanding of what the weaknesses were in the home heating market and how what you all had in the middle of the country could help them enjoy a renaissance,” Nazzaro says. He connected farmers and home heating oil business owners. and the two sectors began conversing. “As we explored this and looked at the particulars, we thought it could be really big, especially if New York would embrace a 2% blend,” says Greg Anderson, who was then the chairman of the Nebraska Soybean Board. “We weren’t really thinking of other blends like 5, 10, 50 to 100, but we knew if it was successful it would be a huge market for soybean oil.” Some farmers, including Anderson,
BY BETHANY BARATTA
flew to the Northeast to learn about the home heating oil industry. Some heating oil industry leaders flew to Nebraska, stepping their wingtip shoes on farms to learn about soybean production.
Meanwhile, in Massachusetts
About the same time, Charlie Uglietto faced competition from the natural gas industry, which branded the heating oil industry as antiquated and dirty. This threated his family’s business, Cubby Oil and Energy, which his father started in 1945. “We were losing market share,” says Uglietto, who recently took part in a National Biodiesel Board-arranged Big Apple Biodiesel Tour.
