Fryer Oil at Autzen Stadium Converted to Biofuel

By Diane Dietz

(Eugene) Register-Guard

EUGENE - The oil that cooked game-day french fries at Autzen Stadium on Saturday afternoon will be shipped to Salem, mingled with oil that cooked Kettle Chips and converted into biodiesel, which fans with diesel-burning cars could burn on the way to the Tennessee game in two weeks.

The loop from food to fuel will be completed because the University of Oregon athletic department has made a deal to hand over its cooking oil to Salem-based SeQuential Pacific Biodiesel after each of this season's seven home football games.

And here's another loop: SeQuential Pacific Biodiesel was launched by three UO students in the incubator on campus.

Their venture just announced production of its 20 millionth gallon of biodiesel fuel — a blend of vegetable and petroleum oils - which produces 78 percent less carbon dioxide and hazardous pollutants than pure petroleum-based diesel.

The company expects to make more than 6 million gallons in 2013, UO graduate and SeQuential General Manager Tyson Keever said. It employs 100 in Oregon and Washington.

"This is very meaningful for us to have the business come back and provide full service to the university," Keever said. "It does have a very special place in our heart."

UO athletics is a bit late to the biofuels party. SeQuential has serviced Oregon State University's Reser Stadium in Corvallis for a year and the University of Washington's Husky Stadium in Seattle longer than that, Keever said.

The company collects cooking oil from the Seattle Mariners' Safeco Field and the Seattle Seahawks' CenturyLink Field, the Portland Timbers' Jeld-Wen Field and from the concession stands at Hillsboro Ballpark, where the minor league Hillsboro Hops play baseball.

Game days yield 200 to 600 gallons of french fry oil per stadium.

The athletic department doesn't have a written contract with SeQuential, said Eric Roedl, executive senior associate athletic director for finance and administration.

"We've got some containers from them that we fill up with cooking oil that — when we're ready to dispose of — they pick it up. We don't pay them."

The UO main campus leaped onto the biofuels bandwagon long before the athletic department hopped on. The Erb Memorial Union signed up with SeQuential in 2011; the University Housing and Dining Services stepped aboard in 2012.