Oct. 20, 2025
By John Hult, South Dakota Searchlight
The leader of the company that has abandoned its immediate plans to build a $2.6 billion ethanol-based jet fuel plant in Lake Preston said Friday that South Dakota is no longer a friendly place to do business.
In 2022, Gevo CEO Patrick Gruber stood alongside South Dakota Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden, then the lieutenant governor, at the ceremonial groundbreaking for the project, billed as the largest economic development project in state history.
Last week, Gruber and his Colorado-based company announced plans for a smaller jet fuel facility at an ethanol plant in Richardton, North Dakota.
Gevo bought the plant a year ago in the wake of South Dakota pushback on a carbon sequestration pipeline that was critical to the company’s Lake Preston business plan.
“South Dakota is a very difficult place to do business,” Gruber told South Dakota Searchlight on Friday. “Everything is oppositional. North Dakota is a breath of fresh air.”
Gruber said his company still hopes to build something on the 200-odd acres it owns in Kingsbury County at some point in the future. It wouldn’t be a stand-alone ethanol plant, he said, but it could be a jet fuel plant that uses corn oil or ethanol, or be used as a chemical production plant.
Gruber sees a future where 70 of the nation’s approximately 180 ethanol plants use designs like Gevo’s to convert to jet fuel production. Demand is growing, he said, and the U.S. can’t keep up with the petroleum-based refineries it has.
That’s long term, though. Whether the Lake Preston site is a part of that conversation or is used for another offshoot of Gevo’s operations is also a ways off.
At this point, after watching opposition to the Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline drive policy changes over the past three years, Gruber said he’s wary of engaging South Dakota leaders.
In 2022, he said, there was strong support in state leadership for both the pipeline and Gevo’s Net Zero-1 complex in Kingsbury County.
Then, the political winds shifted.
“Having lived through the change, I’m not doing that again,” Gruber said.
South Dakota Searchlight is a nonprofit news organization primarily covering state government news. To read more on Gevo’s next steps, click here.
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At one point, this company sought to build a $2.6 billion ethanol-based jet fuel plant in Lake Preston. Now, its CEO has some tough words for doing business in South Dakota.
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