I thought this guy Charles Abbott did ok with how he wrote the article. It didn't give any perspective on the difference in BTU per gallon or annual US BTU or OIl consumption, but it had a lot of good perspective.
If we use about 20 million barels of oil per day, this is about 840 million gallons per day, or about 307 Billion gallons of Oil per year. Hence, if we did triple usage to about 5 Billion Gallons of ethanol per year, it would displace how much of our Oil usage? Hard to say precisely because each gallon of oil is refined in to this or that product, and the end-products have more BTU per gallon than ethanol, but in any case, it's less than 2% of daily petroleum use, it would seem. Now, if those fuels could be used more efficiently, in addition to the shift toward a little ethanol, and if we could have grid-chargeable hybrids, and this and that.... http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/020815/energy_ethanol_1.html Related Quotes ADM BP.L RD.AS SHEL.L WMB XOM 11.89 Thursday August 15, 3:46 pm Eastern Time Reuters Company News US ethanol drive not slowed by corn price surge By Charles Abbott (Adds Bush in paragraph 5, stock symbols in paragraph 9) WASHINGTON, Aug 15 (Reuters) - The U.S. ethanol industry, which has expanded capacity by 10 percent so far this year, will not be slowed by sharply higher prices for its key ingredient of corn, industry experts say. ADVERTISEMENT In addition to nine U.S. plants that went into production since Jan. 1, 11 new plants are under construction, according to an ethanol trade group. Three are expected to come into production yet this year. Ethanol, distilled almost totally from corn in the United States, has enjoyed rising demand as an additive for motor fuels. Usage could triple to 5 billion gallons a year, under a wide-ranging energy bill pending in Congress. Farm state lawmakers and President George W. Bush have endorsed measures to boost ethanol use because it benefits farmers and stretches the U.S. gasoline supply. "Ethanol is good for our economy," Bush said during a Thursday appearance in South Dakota. "It's good for our air. It makes common sense." A record 1.77 billion gallons of ethanol were distilled last year. But U.S. corn prices have soared in recent days, and appear likely to remain high for the foreseeable future. Corn futures prices surged to five-year highs at the Chicago Board of Trade on Monday, propelled by the Agriculture Department's forecast of the smallest crop since 1995. Corn for delivery in December traded at $2.86 a bushel on Thursday. "Definitely, the manufacturing cost of ethanol is going to rise," said Ron Miller, president of Illinois-based Williams Bio-Energy, a unit of the Williams Cos. Inc. (NYSE:WMB - News). Williams is the second-largest U.S. ethanol marketer after Archer Daniels Midland Co. (NYSE:ADM - News). TAX BREAK NOW MORE IMPORTANT But Miller and Bob Dinneen, head of the Renewable Fuels Association, said corn prices were a minor point when ethanol was the logical replacement for MTBE in making cleaner-burning fuels. Federal law requires use of "clean" fuels in cities with air pollution problems. MTBE -- methyl tertiary butyl ether -- is being phased out in a number of states, most prominently California, because it was found to pollute water supplies. Federal clean air laws require an oxygenate-enhancing chemical such as MTBE or ethanol to produce cleaner-burning fuel in a third of the nation. California is the largest U.S. gasoline market, consuming 1 million barrels a day. Three oil firms -- Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM - News), BP (London:BP.L - News) and Shell Oil Co., a unit of Royal Dutch/Shell Group (Amsterdam:RD.AS - News; London:SHEL.L - News) -- supply more than half of the state's gasoline and will switch to ethanol before the state MTBE ban in 2004. But some California officials have rejected the switch to ethanol, saying it will boost fuel prices or create shortages because ethanol must be shipped by truck, rail or barge rather than pipeline. "Under virtually any scenario, ethanol demand is going to increase in the next several years," Dinneen said. "Growth in demand suggests there is going to be increased production, despite more volatility in corn prices." Agricultural economist Wally Tyner at Purdue University said higher corn prices would do "nothing" to ethanol prices. Tyner said ethanol, in its role as an oxygen-containing fuel additive, fluctuated in price with gasoline and MTBE. Higher corn prices would cut into producer profits, he said, but makers still should make money due to ethanol's federal fuel-tax break. Ethanol receives a 5.3-cent a gallon exemption from the federal fuel tax at the pump, where it is a 10 percent blend with gasoline. The tax break was scheduled to drop to 5.2 cents a gallon in 2003 and finally expire in 2007. Recently, ethanol sold for about $1.10-$1.20 a gallon. The USDA forecast an average farm-gate price of $2.50 a bushel for this year's corn crop, 57 cents higher than the season-average for last year's crop. "I don't think the vast majority of the industry will be hurt too badly by this," Miller said, referring to higher corn prices. "These numbers are not catastrophic. They are high (but) the industry has seen worse." Higher prices would be blunted somewhat for producers. About 30 percent of the purchase price for corn can be recovered from co-products of corn milling. One bushel of corn yields 2.5-2.7 gallons of ethanol. So, a 50-cent increase in corn prices could carry a 13.5-cent impact on a gallon of ethanol. With the nine plants that came into production this year, the ethanol industry is able to produce 2.55 billion gallons a year. The 11 plants under construction would add 340 million gallons of capacity. In farm country, ethanol has been popular since the oil embargoes of the 1970s as a home-grown alternative to imported fuel and an additional source of farm income. More than 800 million bushels of corn were likely to be used in ethanol production this year. ------------------------ Yahoo! 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