Algae-based fuels a growing business in New Mexico

Algae ponds are starting to color New Mexico’s desert landscape green.

Sapphire Energy Inc., which uses a proprietary process to turn algae oil into renewable gasoline to replace fossil fuels at the pump, broke ground last June on a 300-acre commercial demonstration facility in Columbus.

In Hobbs, in the heart of southeast New Mexico’s oil patch, Massachusetts-based Joule Unlimited Inc. broke ground this fall on a five-acre site that will use concentrating-solar biorefineries to extract ethanol and diesel from bacteria in salt-water mixed with carbon dioxide.

For more on that project, see "Joule extracts fuels from bacteria."

But while those two projects are under construction, a third company is already growing algae to produce oil and other products at a one-acre site in Jal, in Lea County.

Eldorado Biofuels LLC constructed four ponds, or raceways, where it grows algae with produced water from oil and gas production on land owned by Gregg Fulfer of the Fulfer Oil and Cattle Co. in Jal, said Eldorado President and CEO Paul Laur. Eldorado has developed a proprietary process to treat produced water for use in algae cultivation.

Read more in the New Mexico Business Weekly.