For a few years in the late 1970s and early 80s, Bingham County farmers (and more widely, Idaho and American farmers in general) thought they might capitalize on a new market for their products. Uncertain oil supply from the Middle East, due to political upheavals, threatened the country's security. Government officials looked to agriculture as a possible source to replace expensive imported fuel. Fresh off a potato diversion year when millions of sacks of spuds had to be fed to cattle, farmers were eager to find an additional market for their goods and jumped at the chance to make alcohol, ethanol, gasohol and even "spudcohol"--as the self-proclaimed "Shah of Pingree" dubbed his product.
The Iranian Revolution in 1979 sparked the second "oil shock" to the American economy, the first coming in 1973 in the wake of the Israel-Egypt war. Looking for alternatives to imports, the government turned to America's strong suit, agriculture, as a fuel source. Congress authorized funding for four gasohol plants in 1978, each costing $15 million, and Idaho was working to acquire one of them. Senator James McClure suggested 25 plants would be more appropriate to combat oil supply problems and Senator Frank Church pushed for favorable legislation to push the use of farm products to make alcohol.
There were detractors to the idea. Kansas Senator Bob Dole, though a supporter, noted that it also took fossil fuels for the process to create alcohol. A USDA report stated that it would take forty percent of the US grain supply--four billion bushels--to replace ten percent of the fuel used in the country, a possibly crippling amount that would stretch the food supply thin. Some Americans doubted alcohol's sufficiency as a fuel, thinking it an untried novelty, even though 2300 service stations had sold gasohol clear back in the 1930s.
A study was undertaken at Raft River in the hopes of using geothermal energy for an alcohol plant and four gasohol sites in Wyoming were vying for a plant, even as an Aberdeen farmer already had production facilities underway. Ferrell Palmer intended to use a thousand sacks of low-grade potatoes a day to make 1500 gallons of alcohol.
More businessmen and farmers showed interest. Rupert, Idaho. Kimberly, Idaho. Garland, Utah. The prospective facilities proliferated. Manufacturers displayed a prototype plant costing $195,000 at the Ponderosa Inn in Burley, hoping to gain farmers' interest in alcohol production.
Forty permits for plants were pending in Idaho in 1981. A Burley plant was okayed and a large production facility, operated by Power-Idaho Alcohol, was expected to start construction on January 1, 1981 between Blackfoot and Firth. It would utilize cull potatoes and barley.
A Pingree facility was well underway at the time, operated by the self-proclaimed "Shah of Pingree" Gene Whitworth. His production began in early 1981 with failed batches of "vinegar" created by an enzyme process. He switched methods, putting in an acid hydrolysis machine that reduced potatoes to "a syrup mash in eight minutes." He expected to be producing three thousand gallons of alcohol a day. Frank Echevarria was selling Whitworth's product in gasohol at his station in Blackfoot--Frank's Oil and Tire--, a mainstay in the city across from Kesler's Market.
The state of Idaho provided a forty cent per gallon rebate early on in the gasohol mini-boom, which would be repealed early in 1981 as gas prices were ebbing and the new administration under Ronald Reagan removed support for alternative energies. Still, even in 1982 Forde-Johnson OIl in Idaho Falls reported sales of gasohol--now called ethanol--taking up 13% of the demand, though initial quantities were higher when more drivers were trying it out. Ethanol was exempt from the four cent a gallon federal tax and the four cent a gallon state tax, too. Gas was selling at $1.80 at the time. As tensions in the Middle East waned, so did interest in ethanol, and existing plants in Aberdeen, Pingree and Grandview were gutted for parts.
Ralph Thurston is the author of The Shanghi Plain: Bingham County's Early History, available at Kesler's Market in Blackfoot and online at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CCCS7XLR?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860
(For bulk or classroom pricing, contact the author)
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