If, as I fear we are headed for $4 and $5 a gallon gasoline, these plants should do OK. Also, if they can ever get cellulosic ethanol going that will make a big difference. I saw an interesting piece about butanol as a possible fuel, but have not seen anything recent about how that is progressing. According to the article a better, more energy efficient product than ethanol.
Furthermore, I am afraid that oil which hit $111 is unlikely to go down any time soon as the new USO oil ETF is driving the price higher than it should be (about 20%more). These Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) are mechanisms for large institutional investors to put their money into oil. They have to buy in lots of $4 million or more, and in the past year or two their investment in oil has jumped from $9 billion to more than 1/4 trillion dollars. This is really unnerving.
Corn is presently about $5.60 per bushel. An efficient plant will obtain 3 gallons of ethanol together with 18 pounds of DDG's (plus corn oil and CO2) from each bushel. The fuel and feed value, alone, of the bushel is worth over $10. If an operator can't process a bushel corn for five bucks, it really shouldn't be in business.