Comments on: Bob Dinneen Energizes Ethanol Industry at FEW

By: flee

flee — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:18:03 +0000

I’ve been burning higher concentrations of E-85 in my non flex fuel vehicles. No problems. The engine starts and runs the same only with cleaner plugs and oil. I’m almost to pure E-85 and haven’t changed a thing on engine. My mpg drop a little, going from 23 to 20, but the fuel cost dropped from $2.78 to as low as $2.12. The engine does have more power.

My friend runs E-85 in his lawnmower and chainsaw. He switched to synthetic oil containing castor oil as the regular 2 cycle oil didn’t mix well. The vegetable oils have better lubrication qualities and works well with ethanol. Race engines have utilized castor oil for best in class performance, historically. So, since the vegetable oils better for environment would the marine engines be better off burning pure ethanol? And two cycle outboards utilize vegetable oil?

By: Bob Dinneen

Bob Dinneen — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 01:41:22 +0000

Marty, it’s true that last year, as gasoline prices plummeted, the RFS was driving demand for ethanol. But previously, when gasoline prices were skyrocketing, gasoline marketers and consumers were pining for as much ethanol as they could find. Indeed, the reason Congress expanded the RFS is that the ethanol industry was producing far more than the original RFS required and gasoline marketers were looking for more. We’re watching gasoline creep up again, and we all know we’re going to see higher prices still, when that happens, you’ll see how the “intrinsic” value of ethanol drives demand well beyond the RFS levels. That’s as it should be … the RFS is providing a floor to encourage investment. Consumers will drive demand if artificial constraints to blending are removed.

But, Marty, I’ve got a question for you … haven’t we had a mandate for gasoline long enough? Do you really want to keep paying Hugo Chavez and OPEC for their oil – risking our economy and our environment? What’s your solution?

By: peabody09

peabody09 — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:53:03 +0000

Marty, think about what the ethanol producers have to deal with. They have to sell their product to blenders totally controlled by the Big Oil companies. Big Oil wants to protect their turf, so they’ll do anything to keep ethanol out of their market and have the perfect opportunity to do this via their control over the distribution system all the way to the retailer. How are ethanol producers going to be able to compete without some sort of intervention into this virtually monopoly. Ethanol is not perfect, but it keeps getting more efficient and more environmentally friendly, which replacing imported oil.

By: Marty Dalrymple

Marty Dalrymple — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:33:58 +0000

A question for Mr. Dineen: You say the U.S. ethanol industry grew by 34% last year. That’s true, but isn’t that “growth” only a result of the mandate in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007? If that mandate wasn’t in place, and ethanol had to compete on nothing more than its intrinsic value, what would have happened?