Another isobutanol plant in Minnesota

Gevo Inc., a biofuels company that is retrofitting a Minnesota ethanol plant into one that produces alcohol called isobutanol, says that it plans to do the same at a second plant in South Dakota.

The company said the venture with Redfield Energy LLC of Redfield, S.D., will retrofit that company's ethanol plant into one that's capable of producing 38 million gallons of isobutanol per year.

Isobutanol has a broad range of uses, including paint solvents and ink. Gevo intends to market the product to the chemical industry, which now uses isobutanol made from petroleum.

Gevo this month began retrofitting a plant in Luverne, Minn., and hopes to begin isobutanol production next year. With the two operations, the Englewood, Colo.-based company estimates total output of about 60 million gallons per year by 2012. It also intends to convert a still-unidentified third plant.

JIM BUCHTA

Oil push in AmericasOver the next few years, world consumers are going to become more dependent on North and South America to satisfy their thirst for crude oil, according to a forecast released Thursday by the International Energy Agency.

The Paris-based organization estimated that the world would increase total oil production every year between 2010 and 2016 by an average 1.1 million barrels a day -- roughly 100,000 barrels short of the expected increase in global demand over the period.

The report warned that high oil prices "are weighing down on an already-fragile macroeconomic and financial situation" in developed countries while burdening the financial health of developing countries and pushing up inflation.

The agency predicts demand growth over the next few years will come from China, as well as elsewhere in Asia and the Middle East. Energy demand in the United States is expected to be flat, with a less robust economy.

Global markets will need to rely increasingly on producers outside the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. The energy agency suggested that Canada, Brazil, the United States and Colombia would need to take up the slack.

The report projected that by 2016, Canada would produce 1.3 million additional barrels a day as it expanded production from the oil sands in Alberta.

The United States, despite the slowdown in oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, will produce an additional 500,000 barrels a day largely from expanded drilling in oil shale fields in North Dakota and Texas, the agency said.