All American fuel: CountryMark refines oil from the Midwest, not the Middle East. And Hoosier farmers reap the rewards.

AuthorKaelble, Steve
PositionCover story

IT WAS EASY TO DESPISE the oil industry last summer, when gas prices were in the stratosphere and it felt like there was a direct pipeline emptying your wallet into the sands of the Middle East. Consider, though, that your neighbor here in Indiana might own a piece of the petroleum business--and depending upon which pump you pull up to for a fill-up, you might actually be powering your car with Indiana fuel.

Sure, Indianapolis-based CountryMark Cooperative is no ExxonMobil or BP; it's just a drop in the barrel in the oil business. But it's our drop in the barrel, and it's pumping oil from the ground right here in the Midwest, instead of the Middle East. Controlled by a group of member-owned agricultural cooperatives spanning the state, CountryMark is busily building up its oil drilling and refining operations, offering one more way to buy local. "We're owned by farmers, and we pay a portion of our profits back to the local co-ops, which pay it back to the farmers," says president and CEO Charlie Smith.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"We're one of the smaller oil refiners in the U.S.," Smith admits. CountryMark's refinery in Mount Vernon can process about 26,500 barrels of oil a day, about a fifth of the average-size American refinery But those barrels come from oil wells not so far away, across what's known as the Illinois Basin--about 10 percent from Indiana, 10 percent from Kentucky and 80 percent from southern Illinois. "That's kind of where God laid it all down."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

It's a winning formula for a lot of Hoosiers and their counterparts from nearby states. Not only do co-op member-owners share in the profits--Smith says CountryMark has distributed roughly $75 million in the last five years--those landowners hosting wells get a cut of the proceeds as well, through royalties that can run into the tens of thousands of dollars per well every year. Some 40,000 landowners benefit from deals with CountryMark each year.

MARKETING MIDWESTERN FUEL

"We launched a new branding campaign a year and a half ago," Smith says. "We believe what we stand for is American fuel."

And it's not just the locally drilled oil that's on the menu. CountryMark blends about 90 percent of the biodiesel used in Indiana, Smith says. In the early 1990s, CountryMark teamed up with the Indiana Soybean Alliance to field-test biodiesel blends made in part with Indiana-grown soybeans. By 2002, that test was deemed a success and the company added biodiesel-blended fuels...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT