U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins held a press conference this past Tuesday to announce actions the USDA has taken to address fertilizer production.
“The Blue Point project in Louisiana within 45 days and thanks to the quick movements of General Butch Graham with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with Adam Tell, we should see permitting wrapped up on this project to build a $3.7 billion ammonia plant which when opened will become the world’s largest ammonia plant in Louisiana. That permitting they moved at Trump speed is what we like to say but so grateful to be able to announce that today under another administration it probably would have not happened or if it would have it would have taken years and years to get to permitting.
We’re so excited about not only the fertilizer implications of that but the hundreds and hundreds of jobs that will come along with it for the great state of Louisiana and of course our administrator Zeldin will be part of that as well,” said Secretary Rollins.
Secretary Rollins also addressed efforts regarding the Fertilizer Production Expansion Program.
“We’ll be assisting the higher impact awardees with project completion for example an 80 million dollar investment in Washington state under this program that was stalled is projected to produce 700,000 tons annually of hydrogen ammonia fertilizer that will support over 200 jobs. We expect construction to begin this year. Another example because these FPEP projects were all over from small to big the small ones are important too as we talk about deconsolidating and deregulating and having smaller alongside larger. A 3.9 million dollar project in Iowa will host a ribbon cutting this summer specifically to work to expand domestic organic fertilizer production capacity through large-scale composting and nutrient processing,” said Secretary Rollins.
Audio Reporting by Dale Sandlin and Elizabeth Sanders for Southeast AgNet.