Willie Nelson "anoints" Oregon biodiesel plant

Yes, anoints.

So proclaimeth the headline from the company's PR firm.

Today, entertainer Willie Nelson is helping Oregon's first commercial biodiesel plant celebrate its two-year anniversary by headlining a press conference and ground-breaking of an expansion of the plant.

The plant is to grow from one million gallons a year to five, albeit a fraction of the size of conventional biodiesel plants.

This one's a little different, though. In best hippie fashion, Pacific Biodiesel's Salem, Oregon plant has been converting recycled cooking oil from restaurants and food processors in Oregon and Washington, such as Burgerville and Kettle Foods. It's now starting to use canola oil grown elsewhere in Oregon.

(We're not slagging hippies. Heck, if anything, we love pointing out that they got it RIGHT... witness organic fuel, organic food, home schooling, etc.!)

Nelson is to arrive in his biodiesel-powered tour bus for the event later today, which will begin at 10:30 a.m. at the SeQuential-Pacific Biodiesel plant in Salem.

When in-state production reaches its five million gallons per year capacity using raw materials from the Pacific Northwest, the statewide RFS included in the Biofuels Bill (HB 2210) will be enacted. The RFS will increase annual demand for biodiesel by approximately 10 million gallons, to total nearly twenty million gallons of biodiesel per year.

Which, by other states' measures, is a drop in the bucket. The output of a single biodiesel plant.

But, this is Oregon.

Now, if we could just get that image of an "anointing" Willie Nelson out of our minds...