Project to turn old tires into oil is moving ahead

Ervin Lee of Minot, N.D., and his group of investors, including his brothers and Ron Nichols, the inventor of the oil-from-tires process, bought a 9,000-ton pile of tires from Moorhead’s former Tire Depot earlier this year.

The group has been hauling tires from the site to its testing plant on a farm in Berthold, in north central North Dakota. After the tires are shredded, workers extract oil and other petroleum products using a patented process involving heat and a chemical catalyst.

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