Posts Tagged ‘ethanol’

Big Oil crashes Big Corn’s party in the Capitol

By Herman Wang | May 3, 2013 12:56 PM Comments (0)

It was supposed to be a routine briefing on Capitol Hill Thursday, a chance for the ethanol industry to share their views with congressional staffers on why the Renewable Fuel Standard should be retained.

But the proceedings were enlivened for a brief moment when an analyst for the oil industry decided to stand up and be heard.

Declaring the ethanol industry’s rhetoric against Big Oil as nothing but bluster, Marcus Koblitz, an analyst with the American Petroleum Institute, said during a question-and-answer session at the briefing that he could dismantle its arguments “brick by brick.”

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An update from the ethanol/RINs battleground: hitting physical markets

By John Kingston | April 12, 2013 06:04 AM Comments (0)

A few updates from the intersection of RINs and ethanol. It’s starting to look like there have been physical market reactions to the rising price of RINs.

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Another voice calls for E85 as a solution to the RINs conundrum

By John Kingston | March 17, 2013 11:59 PM Comments (2)

The idea of using E85 as a way out of the blendwall/RINs issue in the US has another backer.

But it’s not a new backer. Well-known energy economist Phil Verleger several years ago first brought up the likelihood that the refining industry might need to promote the sale of E85 as a way around the Gordian knot of a 10% ethanol blendwall combined with a rising mandate for the use of renewable fuels plus a decline in gasoline demand in the US.

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More on RINs and ethanol: the RFA fires back

By John Kingston | March 12, 2013 01:41 PM Comments (0)

Bob Dineen, the head of the Renewable Fuels Association, is one of the energy industry’s most notable success stories in Washington. Outside of losing the blender’s ethanol credit a few years ago, which by the end the RFA had stopped resisting anyway, the ethanol industry has been a consistent winner in the game of politics. I was in Washington in 2006 when a long-time observer of the Washington scene noted with a sense of amazement that President Bush was going to be speaking to an upcoming RFA summit, and Bob Dineen was going to introduce him. That’s clout.

So it was always going to be interesting waiting to see just what Dineen said about the climbing value of RINs. (They’re falling today). Last Thursday, he finally made his case on the RFA’s website.

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The RINs market is signaling the ethanol blendwall has arrived

By John Kingston | March 7, 2013 02:01 PM Comments (4)

The US ethanol blendwall crisis has been projected to be coming for awhile. And the market is signaling that it’s now here.

The crisis was assumed to be caused by three things all coming together: the fact that only a small minority of the auto fleet can burn ethanol blends more than 10% ethanol, and the infrastructure to provide higher blends for those that can is in its infancy; the fact that US gasoline consumption has been on a long-term decline; and the fact that the US government’s renewable standard is a fixed number of gallons.

(Update: From the first sentences of a story that was published by Platts on Friday:   Prices for renewable fuel credits cracked the $1 barrier Friday and RBOB
prices settled sharply higher as the war of words over who is to blame for skyrocketing credits prices also escalated. The price for the traded Renewable Identification Numbers for corn-based ethanol settled Friday at $1.02 for 2013 RINs after hitting a high mark of $1.10/RIN. Prices for the credits, which are used to show compliance with the federally mandated Renewable Fuel Standard, have jumped from a trading range of about 2-3 cents/RIN at the start of the year.) Read the rest of this entry »

EPA bets on two cellulosic makers for ambitious US blending mandate

By Meghan Gordon | February 5, 2013 11:55 AM Comments (0)

US companies hoping to make the world’s first commercial-scale gasoline and diesel refined from plant waste have much to prove in 2013, after suffering another year of start-up delays, growing attacks by the oil industry and an unfavorable court ruling.

The second-generation biofuels industry’s best defense against those attacks will be to do what the Environmental Protection Agency thinks it can: make 11 million gallons of cellulosic fuel for refiners to blend under the Renewable Fuel Standard.

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US loses ethanol exporter status after Midwestern drought

By Meghan Gordon | November 13, 2012 08:03 AM Comments (6)

After a terrible summer for US ethanol producers, the country has shifted from net ethanol exporter to net importer for the first time in nearly three years.

The US imported 21,000 barrels per day more ethanol in August than it exported, according to the latest stats available from the Energy Information Administration’s Petroleum Supply Monthly report.

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Sandy at week’s end: climbing back. And a helpful suggestion from the ethanol industry

By John Kingston | November 2, 2012 08:43 AM Comments (0)

As the week ends, here are a few things going on with Sandy and oil markets that are trying to get back to normal.

Several developments Thursday showed companies were taking significant steps to go around the power problems in the New York area. Most facilities in the area — particularly those in the whole New Jersey-Staten Island corridor — continue to struggle with no power, flooding, or both. By the end of the day Thursday, though, there was a fair amount of good news. Buckeye Pipelines said it had restored most of its eastern pipeline system. It doesn’t have power at its Linden, NJ terminal, but it brought in generators to allow the terminal partial operations.

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Regulation & The Environment: EPA’s sky-high cellulosic ethanol targets and whether industry will ever reach them

By News Desk | August 20, 2012 04:43 PM Comments (0)

As the requirement for blending cellulosic ethanol in the US fuel supply continues to rise, even though it still doesn’t exist in commercial quantities, there is debate over whether the numbers will ever be reached. Not everybody has thrown in the towel, as Meghan Gordon discusses in this week’s Oilgram News column, Regulation & The Environment.

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As the US corn crop withers, ethanol markets soar, and then slip

By John Kingston | July 27, 2012 05:26 PM Comments (0)

These are the times that ethanol opponents warned against.

A drought crippling the corn crop; a higher level of mandated ethanol use under the Renewable Fuel Standard; non-fuel corn consumers screaming for relief; and now, the almost certain request by some of those consumers for a lifting of at least some of the burden of RFS.

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