According to William Reed, System Controls Inc., Birmingham American has no need of looking for alternate fuels-reason, American has oil in abundance to replace imports from Persian Gulf for nearly 60 years. According to the U.S. Minerals Management Service, there are an estimated 59 billion barrels of oil in the coastal waters off the lower 48 states, in the West Mountains and Alaska. The only problem is that such oil reserves are on federal lands so extraction is severely restricted.



Ethanol More Expensive To Produce Than Gasoline:



Reed has cited from an official report who can refute it? However, let us suppose that the statement is false (I am not trying to refute Reed here). Even then, there are many reasons why harping on ethanol is irrational-main reason being, as it is made from corn, it is more expensive to produce than gasoline-even with tax incentives. If you take the whole production cycle into account, the energy from fossil fuels that’s needed to run farm machinery, fertilize, harvest and transport the corn to ethanol plants and distill the corn into ethanol, the amount of energy used to produce almost equals energy it provides.



Ethanol (85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline) contains only about 70 percent of the energy content of gasoline. The fuel provides fewer miles per gallon than gasoline, so more refilling is required.



In the past three months, the price of ethanol has jumped 54 percent to $3.67 a gallon, more than double of the cost of manufacturing. Therefore, ethanol producing companies are enjoying an enormous profit, at the expense of the American consumer and taxpayer.



Not The Right Solution To Foreign Oil Imports:



Ethanol is not the right solution to replace foreign oil imports. It has been estimated that if all of the ethanol production were used to reduce Persian Gulf imports, the reduction would amount to less than 10 percent. Moreover, since ethanol requires transportation from the Midwest the cost of production escalates.



At What Cost:



Last year’s corn harvest was the second largest in history, but the government shelled out more than $4 billion a year in subsidies for corn production. Recently, the Department of Agriculture has warned that the rise in ethanol production has escalated the cost of cattle feed which in turn would lead to an increase in meat prices. This is not a good picture, corn crop should be used mostly for food production especially when alternatives are readily available. Why isn’t the Government easing out restrictions in oil rich areas instead of following an expensive alternative path called Ethanol.





Via: Montgomery Advertisers