Posts Tagged ‘United States’

Article courtesy of El Paso Times

By Vic Kolenc

SANTA TERESA – With a stroke of a pen, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez on Tuesday started the wheels rolling for a proposed $400 million Union Pacific rail facility in Santa Teresa.

Martinez, appearing in a Santa Teresa warehouse filled with politicians and area business people, signed recently passed state legislation exempting Union Pacific from paying locomotive fuel tax so the railroad company will develop the new facility.

The locomotive fueling station and intermodal freight yard are expected to create 3,000 jobs during four years of construction and to bring 600 permanent jobs, Union Pacific officials have said.

Martinez also signed two other pieces of recently passed legislation: one creating a zone around Santa Teresa and Columbus, N.M., for overweight cargo trucks, which economic developers say should attract more industrial distribution centers, and another to create a border infrastructure fund to make it easier for the New Mexico Border Authority to attract private and public funds for international port of entry improvements.

“As activity increases, Santa Teresa will reap benefits for new commercial and industrial development,” Martinez said. “Today, with the signing of these bills, New Mexico has the opportunity to expand on the possibility of growth.”

Former El Paso Mayor Joe Wardy, vice president of strategic development for Stagecoach Cartage & Distribution, an El Paso trucking and warehousing company, said the Union Pacific complex should help the entire area because Union Pacific’s facilities in El Paso are at capacity. “This helps us as a logistics center,” Wardy said.

Jerry Pacheco, executive director of the International Business Accelerator in Santa Teresa, said, “We’re talking about a project that will change the face of our region and make this the logistical hub of the border.”

Zoe Richmond, director of public affairs for Union Pacific’s Phoenix office, which oversees this area, said the railroad plans to keep its El Paso facilities, including a small intermodal freight yard. But some of its 400 El Paso jobs will eventually be shifted to Santa Teresa, she said. “We had no room to grow. We are land locked in El Paso,” Richmond said.

Union Pacific hopes to begin construction on the 2,200-acre Santa Teresa facility this summer, Richmond said. The company has already begun talking to area educational institutions about work-force development, she said.

This is the third time bills have passed the New Mexico Legislature to bring the Union Pacific facility to Santa Teresa. The project never took off in 2006 because Union Pacific had trouble securing all the land it needed, Richmond said. The project was again ready to be launched in 2008, but the recession killed it, she said.

Everything looks good this time for construction to start this summer, she said. Union Pacific hopes to have the facility open by 2015, Richmond said.

James Robinson III, president of J.H. Rose Logistics, which operates a 65,000-square-foot distribution center in Santa Teresa, said the rail facility should bring more freight traffic into the area. And the overweight truck zone will allow more cargo from Mexico to come into Santa Teresa warehouses, which should help his company and other distribution centers bring in more business, he said.

Pacheco said the overweight truck zone allows trucks to cross from Mexico to Santa Teresa warehouses without heavy loads having to be broken up into several loads as is done today. This can be done at the Santa Teresa port of entry because it has no bridges, which are sensitive to heavy loads, as do other El Paso-area ports, Pacheco said.

Loads of cement or scrap metals that need to be returned from Mexico manufacturing operations to be processed in the United States, are some of the heavy loads that could be processed at Santa Teresa, he said. More finished manufactured goods also could go into the overweight truck zone, he said.

Vic Kolenc may be reached at vkolenc@elpasotimes.com; (915)546-6421.

Article courtesy of the Las Cruces Bulletin

Sapphire Energy photo

By Marvin Tessneer

Sapphire Energy has developed its West Mesa Industrial Park plant into an algae field research and development center, said Bryn Davis, New Mexico operations manager. The algae “green crude oil” production company is constructing a half-acre greenhouse that will be covered with plastic to allow sunlight to stimulate the algae. “We’ll be able to grow algae in small containers with a controlled environment,” Davis said. “This will allow us to experiment faster on a small scale at our field test site before moving outside to larger ponds.”

The process will be a blend of engineering, science and agriculture in one operation. The company has acquired 10 acres at the West Mesa Industrial Park and has the option to purchase up to 100 more acres. Sapphire has also acquired 1,000 acres in Luna County to produce green crude.

The company and contractors are reviewing designs to construct water raceways to cover from 100 to 300 acres underwater to produce algae, Davis said. Many researchers have good ideas, but they have to develop them to make them work, he said. Algae are microorganisms that use sunlight and photosynthesis to produce green crude oil.

The Luna County site will not compete with agriculture. The land is marginal and the water is brackish, but there is ample sunlight, the Sapphire information report emphasized. Producing algae green crude oil does not depend on crops or valuable farmland. It can deliver 19 to 100 times more energy per acre than field crop biofuels. The Sapphire goal is to produce green crude as a “drop-in fuel” transportation replacement fuel can be used as gasoline, diesel or jet fuel.

“There’s no need to change the energy infrastructure or equipment,” Davis said. “The fuel that we’re producing is indistinguishable from the fuels that we’re producing now.” Sapphire plans to start extracting green crude by the summer of 2012.

Algae raceways are constructed with concrete blocks that are lined with plastic. Small paddle wheels circulate the water to keep the algae from settling. Green crude is the oil that algae produce by combining sunlight and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which can be refined into fuel, gasoline, jet fuel and diesel.

Sapphire has compiled a list titled “Why Does Energy Matter So Much?” that discusses countries energy consumption. Driven primarily by transportation fuel consumption, the United States’ demand for crude oil exceeds its supply, forcing the nation to rely on imports to meet the domestic supply deficit. As the U.S. produces renewable fuels, it provides energy security and reduces carbon dioxide emissions. Algae biomass is among the renewable energy leaders.

Electric, thermal and transportation energy use in the U.S. emit about 5,890 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, and liquid fuel and coal emit 4,715 million tons per year.

Article courtesy of the Las Cruces Bulletin

By Gabriel Vasquez

The Santa Teresa Port of Entry could be a model for effectual cross-border transportation and economic development, if only the right pieces fall into place, said Francisco Uranga, Foxconn vice president and chief business operations officer for Latin America.

Francisco Uranga

Uranga, speaking during an economic forum held by the Mesilla Valley Economic Development Alliance Friday, Oct. 8, urged local business leaders to rally local, regional and state legislators to focus their economic development efforts on improving infrastructure in Santa Teresa that has “tremendous potential” for bi-national development. “There are tremendous opportunities here to create a transportation metroplex that serves the purposes of the industrial companies on both sides of the border,” Uranga said. “People must realize the potential for the entire region, because as it is now, we’re being extremely inefficient with our transportation in this area.”

Uranga was instrumental in bringing the 500-acre Foxconn manufacturing facility to San Jeronimo, Mexico, which employs about 6,000 people and manufactures roughly 13,000 computers, laptops and servers each day. Foxconn is a Taiwanese industrial giant, building the majority of electronic components for popular companies such as Apple, Nokia, Motorola, HP and others. Foxconn has 1.1 million employees worldwide and is growing at an astounding rate, increasing profits by 67 percent in 2009.

When the San Jeronimo Foxconn facility was built in 2009, it was anticipated that the facility would bring many supply and logistics companies to the U.S. side of the border, which would significantly increase traffic through the Santa Teresa crossing and prompt economic development on both sides of the border.

That progress has been slow in coming, however, Uranga said, for various reasons. The approval and subsequent extension of the Juarez free trade zone will not go into effect until next year, Uranga said. The promised rail station, train-to-truck facility and refueling station proposed years ago by Union Pacific Railroad has also yet to materialize, and renovations are needed to the Santa Teresa Airport to accommodate large passenger and cargo jets, such as DC-10 aircraft, to satisfy the needs of logistics companies.

Uranga said the Santa Teresa-San Jeronimo border corridor is ideal for new maquilas and other enterprises because of its close proximity to the Santa Teresa Port of Entry, which would allow American investors, business and operations managers to cross into Mexico without fear of encountering the violence that has so badly plagued Ciudad Juarez.

“Picture an operation along the fence of the U.S. line, with secure corridors going through both U.S. and Mexican customs, where goods are coming through with dedicated lanes for transportation,” he said “This is why the importance of the (Foxconn) project is being talked about. We’re thinking about a new railway, a new (Santa Teresa Airport) runway and the expansion of the (Santa Teresa) crossing.”

In August, Gov.Bill Richardson announced that the New Mexico Border Authority signed a $1.23 million grant agreement with the Economic Development Administration, which will be utilized to evaluate the expansion of commercial rail services along the U.S.-Mexico border. The agreement has the full support of Richardson and U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman.

“Expanding commercial rail service along the border is fundamental to increasing trade between the United States and Mexico and will be a huge boost to the economy of southern New Mexico,” Richardson said. “I am pleased that this grant will allow us to continue our work on this important project.”

Zoe Richmond, director of public affairs for Union Pacific, said the railway extension project proposed by UP isn’t yet off the table, but she didn’t give a timetable for future investment in the area.  “We stalled the project,” she said. “We did that obviously because of the economy. We are not able at this time to advance as we originally thought.”

The proposed $150 million Santa Teresa UP transfer station would clear congestion on the El Paso and Juarez railway, Uranga said. The transfer station would create more than 280 jobs and be able to process up to 100,000 containers per year.

Plans for improvements to the Santa Teresa Airport, however, are materializing. In September, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced that Santa Teresa will receive $2.2 million in funding for runway extensions.

“We’re taking baby steps to neutralize any major disadvantages we may have,” said Jerry Pacheco, director of the International Business Accelerator, a New Mexico nonprofit that specializes in cross-border economic development. Uranga said without state and federal financial support, infrastructure improvements and cross-border communication and cooperation, development on the Santa Teresa corridor will continue to lag.

“If you build it, they will come,” Uranga said. “If these things are in place, by having these projects complete and expanding the (Santa Teresa) airport, when you can have a container yard on the Mexican side, you can reroute the train lines from the center of Juarez to Santa Teresa.”

Ultimately, if the border transportation and logistics corridor that Uranga envisions becomes reality, he sees the “inefficient” trucking dominated transportation system currently in place across the border as a thing of the past. No longer will hundreds of trailers from the west and inner-city of Juarez logjam El Paso’s three border crossings every day, but instead a sophisticated truck-to-train system, with the help of logistics and transportation companies on each side of the border, will replace the current system, with many companies using the Santa Teresa Port of Entry.

“This is great potential that we’re sitting on,” Uranga said. “We bought into the idea, my chairman trusted me in setting up the (Foxconn) facility here, and once the free trade zone is approved in the first quarter of next year, we’ll start moving.

“But we need private sector people to continue to work with us and set up next to us. We need the U.S. side, the Mexico side, the New Mexico side and the Juarez and El Paso side working together on this. If we continue competing and fighting among each other, it won’t work. We need to maximize our potential.”

At Foxconn, Uranga is responsible for government relations at all levels as well as regulations, incentives, tax and duties, legal customers, immigration and land and construction issues in Latin America. He serves on the Board of Directors of Superior Industries International Inc., one of the largest wheel-makers in the world. From 1998 to 2004, he served as secretary of industrial development for the State of Chihuahua.

Article courtesy of the Las Cruces Bulletin

By Todd G. Dickson

Efforts are progressing to build a solar power plant in Hatch, which could be ready to begin generating 5 megawatts by summer 2011.

So far, NextEra Energy Resources has negotiated a power purchase agreement with El Paso Electric Co. and secured a 35-acre site in the village’s industrial park. The agreement with El Paso Electric is part of the utility’s rate request for 2011 that still needs to be signed off by the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission.

Should all the regulatory requirements be cleared over the next several months as expected, construction on the plant could start in December or January 2011 and be operational by June 2011.

The proposal may be a small plant by the company’s standards – NextEra Energy Resources is the largest U.S. company in the renewable energy market with a total generating capacity of more than 18,000 megawatts in its operations in 28 states and Canada – but the Hatch plant will be using new technology that gets its energy from the sun in a more concentrated fashion.

This would make the Hatch plant the largest plant in North America using concentrated solar photovoltaics, said Cory Ramsel, NextEra Energy Resources project manager.

“It’s a little project, but it’s a step in the right direction,” Ramsel said.

The plant would have 90 stations 55 feet tall with solar panels 40 feet wide that will automatically follow the sun’s path. The panels have specialized optics that greatly concentrate the sunlight onto silicon cells to generate electricity. It’s a method that was first developed by Sandia National Laboratories.

There are still issues such as the regulatory steps and getting the transmission system in place, but Ramsel is cautiously optimistic that the proposal will come to fruition, noting the cooperation he’s received from Hatch officials.

“We have a good partnership with the village,” he said.

Jim Hayhoe, a consultant to the Village of Hatch, began working on the project almost two years ago. Hayhoe, who is interested in helping Spaceport America bring economic development to the local communities, said the effort began with conversations with the spaceport’s former executive director Steve Landeene.

Landeene told Hayhoe he was interested in getting some kind of solar generation project going for the spaceport, which is located in the desert between Hatch and Truth or Consequences. At the 2008 International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight, Hayhoe met Paul Turner of Renergix Solar. By early 2009, Renergix formed a partnership with NextEra to get the project going.

The project work has intensified greatly the last few months, Hayhoe said.

While the mostly automated facility will only need two full-time employees, the construction could require as many 30 workers, Hayhoe said. Also, the plant will become the flagship for the industrial park to attract other green industries, he said, and the village is moving to set aside adjacent land to allow for future expansion of the plant.

NextEra Energy Resources, which has a wind plant in eastern New Mexico, sees the state as having promising renewable energy resources, Ramsel said.

NextEra Energy Resources is the largest U.S. producer of renewable energy from the wind and the sun. According to its website, the company is the No. 1 solar power generator in the United States and the No. 1 wind energy producer in North America.

The company co-owns and operates seven solar plants in California’s Mojave Desert, the world’s largest solar site. In all, NextEra Energy Resources operates 310 megawatts of solar power, which is capable of meeting the energy needs of about 230,000 homes.

In 2009, NextEra Energy Resources corporate parent, NextEra Energy Inc., reported revenues of more than $15 billion and employed more than 15,000 employees. Headquartered in Juno Beach, Fla., NextEra Energy’s principal subsidiaries are NextEra Energy Resources, LLC, the largest generator in North America of renewable energy from the wind and the sun, and Florida Power & Light Company (FPL), which serves approximately 4.5 million accounts in Florida and is one of the largest rate-regulated electric utilities in the country. Through its subsidiaries, NextEra Energy collectively operates the third largest U.S. nuclear power generation fleet, according to its website.

Release courtesy of New Mexico Space Grant Consortium

LAS CRUCES, NM – When Dr. Pat Hynes was recently notified that the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium at New Mexico State University (NMSU) was selected by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as a 2010 Center of Excellence for Commercial Space Transportation, she predicted that this would help make New Mexico the magnet for commercial space in the nation and the world. At a press conference held August 19 at NMSU, Dr. Hynes noted that this highly competitive process for the $10 million dollar funding was an important win for New Mexico because it also marks the first time the federal government has made a major investment in the commercial space industry, and it was made in New Mexico.

“Robert Goddard and NMSU’s Physical Sciences Laboratory were pioneers in the space industry along with White Sands Missile Range, leadership in space research is our heritage at NMSU and in New Mexico” Dr. Hynes said. “As we begin the age of Spaceflight for Mankind, the State of New Mexico is once again leading the effort.”

The FAA has created the Center of Excellence (COE) program in partnership with the Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) to help identify solutions of existing and anticipated space transportation issues. By teaming with the nation’s top academic research institutions, the COE will help ensure the protection of the public, property, and the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States during commercial launch or reentry activities. NMSU will be the lead institution for the FAA, working with the following core university partners: New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology; Florida Institute of Technology; Florida Center for Advanced Aero-Propulsion; Stanford University; University of Colorado – Boulder; and the University of Texas – Medical Branch.

Initial funding for the COE is $2 million for the start-up phase, with and additional $4 million in agency funds over the first five years of operation, which will be matched by the partners to total $10 million in initial funding. Center Operations Cooperative Agreements will be issued to all seven research universities. Research funding will come from government contracts in addition to the operating funds in the form of IDIQ contracts.

Dr. Hynes explained what the COE will do for the FAA. “We will work on research for improved spaceport operations systems, and to find ways to improve airspace integration, for example.” She explains that vehicles traveling to space will transverse through present commercial air space, so changes to the air traffic control process will allow for frequent travel to and from space. “We will also characterize the business of commercial space, and define the related markets we expect it will create.” In addition, the COE will provide education services for all organizations involved in commercial space transportation.

Dr. Hynes is also the Director of the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium which is a member of the congressionally funded National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program. This program is administered by NASA. The statewide consortium supports a wide range of space related research and education projects, including the Student Launch Program which provides annual access to space from Spaceport America for student experiments.