Monday, November 15, 2010

First you Subsidize the Ethanol, then you Export it. (ADM; PEIX)

Maybe it's time to go back to prohibition.
From Bloomberg:
U.S.-produced ethanol, subsidized by the federal government as an alternative to foreign oil, is being exported in record quantities, the Financial Times reported.

A U.S. tax credit to companies that blend ethanol with petrol expires at the end of the year, the newspaper said.
Government figures last week showed that 251 million gallons of fuel ethanol, mostly refined from corn, were exported in the first nine months of the year, more than double the total in 2009; actual exports may have been higher, since ethanol mixed with gasoline before shipment isn’t counted, the FT said....MORE 
"I was also proud to stand up for the ethanol tax exemption when it was under attack in the Congress -- at one point, supplying a tie-breaking vote in the Senate to save it. The more we can make this home-grown fuel a successful, widely-used product, the better-off our farmers and our environment will be."
-Vice-President Al Gore
Third Annual Farm Journal Conference, December 1, 1998
WASHINGTON, Aug. 3— With a tie-breaking vote by Vice President Al Gore, the Senate upheld today an Environmental Protection Agency rule requiring that ethanol and other renewable fuels get a share of the gasoline additives market.

The Senate voted 51-50 to table an amendment that would have denied financing to the agency to carry out a rule guaranteeing renewable fuels a 15 percent share of the lucrative fuel oxygenate market in 1995. That share rises to 30 percent in following years....
August 4, 1994
Yes Al, some of us remember.