Today in Biofuels Opinion: “Overleveraged balance sheets in a commodity business, particularly a business with two (frequently disconnected) commodity prices that must be managed, are rarely a good idea.”

From AviationWeek: In his keynote address to the FAA Forecast Conference in Washington yesterday, [Scott Carson, president and CEO of of Boeing’s Commercial Airplanes] said promising research is coming from alternative fuels using plants that do not compete with food crops, such as camelina and jatropha. And although testing is in a “very early stage,” he said a camelina supplier just informed him a few days ago that it was planting thousands of more acres in Montana and South Dakota because of the successful trials by Japan Airlines. JAL on Jan. 30 tested a Pratt & Whitney-powered 747-300 that mixed three biofuel feedstocks, which was the first to feature the grain camelina.”

Pavel Mochanov, energy analyst, Raymond James: “Last fall, America’s largest ethanol producer, VeraSun Energy, was forced to file for Chapter 11 under a mountain of debt. Last week, Aventine Renewable Energy, which ranks in the top 10, followed suit. Several others are in default and/or are trading as penny stocks. The lesson in all this? Not a trick question…[Overleveraged] balance sheets in a commodity business, particularly a business with two (frequently disconnected) commodity prices that must be managed, are rarely a good idea.”

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