Ethanol company BlueFire is moving forward on its plans to bring a new plant to Fulton.

According to an official announcement from the California-based company, the U.S. Department of Energy has determined BlueFire Ethanol has met the requirements necessary for Phase I of the application process for its loan guarantee program, which is necessary to continue work on its Fulton plant. Blue Fire has requested a total of $250 million under this program and now enters Phase II of the process.

The USDOE previously awarded BlueFire Ethanol an $81.1 million grant to provide sufficient capital for the project’s construction and launch of the Fulton facility as part of a $564 million federal investment in 19 integrated biorefinery projects in 15 states.

“We are very pleased to see the financing for the Fulton facility moving forward,” said Arnold Klann, CEO of BlueFire Ethanol. “It’s going to take programs like the DOE loan guarantee to enable first-of-its-kind technologies to be in a position to secure the necessary funding to move forward and help provide cleaner energy sources to the fuel market.”

The total cost of what is being called the BlueFire Fulton Renewable Energy Project is estimated at approximately $300 million. If completed, the proposed cellulosic biorefinery will occupy a 40-acre site on the east side of Access Road, across from PSP-Monotech.

According to Itawamba County Development Council Executive Director Greg Deakle, who has been working with BlueFire since early 2008, nothing has been set in stone as of yet and all of the fine details are still being ironed out, but things are still moving forward.

“We’re continuing to do due diligence,” Deakle said. “We’re just getting closer to finalizing the process … Everything is going well on our end.”

Deakle said, if all goes well, physical work on the plant might begin by the end of the year, though dirt work on the property should begin even earlier.

BlueFire officials have previously stated the Fulton project will allow the company to utilize unmerchantable timber available in the region as feedstock for the ethanol plant, which will be designed to produce approximately 18 million gallons of ethanol per year. As its name implies, unmerchantable timber consists of logging residues which cannot be used for commercial purposes, including tree tops, branches, stumps and bark associated with timber harvesting activities.

BlueFire plans to purchase these wood wastes through various local timber suppliers.