Ethanol mandate being challenged by energy industry

Washington Examiner:
The oil and ethanol industries showed Tuesday that they are eager to renew hostilities with each other over the Environmental Protection Agency’s renewable fuel program and ethanol mandate, no matter that the government is closed.

American Petroleum Institute CEO Mike Sommers kicked things off while presenting the first State of American Energy report he's published as head of the oil and natural gas industry's lead trade group. In the recommendations for the EPA’s Renewable Fuel Standard, the report called for sunsetting the ethanol mandate.

For the oil industry, it is simple: The program, which mandates that they blend billions of gallons of corn ethanol in gasoline and costs them billions of dollars, is “outdated and broken,” while placing consumers at risk. Therefore, the program should be either killed off or "significantly overhauled,” the report said.

The mandate has been a point of contention between the industries, lawmakers, and even President Trump, who failed to broker a deal between the industries on cutting the cost of complying with the federal program. The program requires most oil refiners to purchase hundreds of millions of dollars in ethanol credits to meet the program's requirements each year.

The oil industry also is opposing Trump's plan to allow higher concentrations of ethanol to be blended in gasoline year-round, which the oil industry says will harm car engines.

The group claims that the oil industry's success has made the ethanol mandate "obsolete." The U.S. is now the largest oil and natural gas producer, which has made it far less reliant on foreign oil producers than when the EPA ethanol program was passed into law over a decade ago.

The oil industry's negative view of the ethanol mandate isn't news to the ethanol industry. But the continued antagonism does show that continuing fighting over the Renewable Fuel Standard isn't going away any time soon.

Geoff Cooper, the head of the ethanol industry’s top trade group, the Renewable Fuels Association, vowed to “continue to fight” for the choice the ethanol industry brings to the consumer at the pump.
...
It is false to claim that the ethanol industry brings choice to the consumer at the pump.  If consumers had a choice there would be no need for a mandate.  If the product really added value they would not need a mandate.  If I were given a choice, I would never buy fuel with ethanol in it.  It has cost me hundreds of dollars to repair small engines it screws up.  Repair centers are clogged with equipment that has been made inoperable by ethanol, from chainsaws to outboard motors and other yard equipment.  It is a bad deal for consumers.

Ethanol has also become counterproductive for its original purpose of reducing the reliance on foreign oil.  Because refiners have to waste money on the mandate, it makes it more difficult to switch their operations to refining the light crude being produced in abundance in US oil fields.  The result has been continued reliance on imported heavy crude.

Ethanol has become a boondoggle for the agribusiness lobby.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more