jacamar

Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed?

If we would eliminate the tarrifs on imported ethanol, Brazil is the best choice for imported ethanol if you don't mind converting tropical forests to row sugar cane. As for PBR and I don't mean "Blue Ribbon. Have owned it for about 4 years. Great investment. Lots of offshore oil and ethanol investment to boot. Also don't have the negative climate conditions tha the Gulf of Mexico has, nor the politics of the Middle East or Venz.

Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed?

Energy master-  Your are nuts. Anyone the misrepresents the facts to make a case does no one any good. First the 7% is really about 5% when you take lower BTU content into account.  Second the energy used to till, plant, fertilize, harvest, transport, process, ship the ethanol to terminals, etc. ends up yielding about 10% energy benefit at best.  Therefore at best we may be seeing 0.5% benefit from ethanol. And where does a large part of the energy to do this come from, big oil... As for all of this great research towards cellulosic ethanol or butanol, don't hold you breath.  these "operations" are pilot scale plants that will not make a dent in ethanol demand. Oh don't forget that ethanol gets a 50+ tax subsidy per gallon paid for by OUR taxes.  Oh forgot to mention the the money TN is is contributing is OUR tax money, Oh forgot to mention we subsidize the farmers with OUR tax money.While the vehicular emissions form "gasohol" is higher, modern vehicles emit very little non CO2 emissions and therefore ethanol is not as bad as on makes it out to be from a regulated emissions point of view.As for repealling the EPACT 2005, it for all practical reasons is history.  The 2007 Energy legislation took care of that.  We will be at 10% ethanol in every drop of gasoline in 2014, i.e. ~15billion gallons per year.   After 2014 our cars designed t run on upt to 10% ethanol will be exposed to greater than 10% because congress "knows" that it will be OK.    I suggest we let market forces drive energy.  Gasoilne consumption is down between 2-3% this summer in the US due to the high price of fuel.  If fuel stays high, people will cut back more and prices will receed.  By the way,  what did you think of BIG Oil 7 years ago when they were not making hardly any money, gasoline in some parts of the country were less than $1/gal.   Remeber when you say big oil you are probably talking about yourself.  Do you own any mutual funds???  If so you are "BIG OIL".  Most non-national oil companies are owned by their shareholders.  SO look in a mirror...   

Corn Ethanol Can Never Replace Meaningful Quantities of Motor Fuel

At least someone is thinking. Now convience the Feds and Ag lobby and you might get somewhere. Oh, what you forgot in you calcualtions is the energy cost to produce all of the ethanol... Some estimates it is a break even proposition in terms of ethanol BTU. If so, then the ethanol net BTU value/benefit should be near zero. The bottom line is we need to conserve, build more nuclear, convert coal to liquids aka South Africa, and allow offshore and ANWAR oil field developments. And annex Canada...(Just joking. Canadains are very good friends and allies and they produce good hockey players)