Posted on 04/18/2009 2:54:42 AM PDT by Scanian
In September, ethanol giant VeraSun Energy opened a refinery on the outskirts of this eastern Iowa community. Among the largest biofuels facilities in the country, the Dyersville plant could process 39 million bushels of corn and produce 110 million gallons of ethanol annually. VeraSun boasted the plant could run 24 hours a day, seven days a week to meet the demand for home-grown energy.
But the only thing happening 24-7 at the Dyersville plant these days is nothing at all. Its doors are shut and corn deliveries are turned away. Touring the facility recently, I saw dozens of rail cars sitting idle. They've been there through the long, bleak winter. Two months after Dyersville opened, VeraSun filed for bankruptcy, closing many of its 14 plants and laying off hundreds of employees. VeraSun lost $476 million in the third quarter last year.
A town of 4,000, Dyersville is best known as the location of the 1989 film "Field of Dreams." In the film, a voice urges Kevin Costner to create a baseball diamond in a cornfield and the ghosts of baseball past emerge from the ether to play ball. Audiences suspended disbelief as they were charmed by a story that blurred the lines between fantasy and reality.
That's pretty much the story of ethanol. Consumers were asked to suspend disbelief as policy makers blurred the lines between economic reality and a business model built on fantasies of a better environment and energy independence through ethanol. Notwithstanding federal subsidies and mandates that force-feed the biofuel to the driving public, ethanol is proving to be a bust
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
ping
If you're going to blame presidents then it is the two before Obama to blame for this fiasco.
No problem. Simply pass a law mandating 300 mpg automobiles,200 mpg semi-trucks, and R-1000 insulation in all homes, and all will be well.
This whole thing was a typical liberal proposition and a scam from day one.
The envirowhackos loved it because no matter the math, we were going to begin to get away from the hated “Big Oil”.
The farmers loved it because it was a market they could grow crops for.
The companies producing ethanol loved it because they were getting big breaks and subsidies to produce ethanol.
The politicians of all stripes loved it because they could pander to the envirowhackos, farmers, companies, Europeans and liberals with no negative effects.
The only people standing up and actually saying anything were the skinny crackpots with scraggly hair, suspenders and slide rules who actually took the time to analyze the whole thing and tried to tell the emperors they had no clothes. They were ridiculed and told to sit down.
Personally, I was too damn busy with other things to pay much attention to this issue, and remembered thinking “Hey, this is small potatoes here...even if it is wasteful, it is a piker of a program compared to other things.” Then, the next time I looked, I read about how everything from gas station pumps and tanker trucks to car engines had been involved in the process due to the destructive nature of the ethanol, and that HUGE plants with boxcars full of corn on specially built train tracks were making this stuff!
Then, I realized it was no coincidence that the price of a lot of other products such as milk, beef and cereals had been steadily rising for some time.
This whole thing was a typical liberal proposition and a scam from day one.
And it is TYPICAL of ANY government run program, replete with profligate waste, unintended consequences and unaccountable politicians. So this is what we want to do with our health care and industry?
We must put a stop to this.
Making corn into ethanol subtracts value.
Unless you can drink the stuff and then it adds a whole lot of value!
This op-ed is an accurate depiction of what many of us in farm country already knew. Unfortunately, it was not politically correct to say so. McCain got hurt in the Corn Belt because of his opposition to ethanol subsidies - one of the positions I agreed with. In fact, the only family I know personally that had an Obama sign in the yard feeds heavily at the government trough via farm programs, and supported Obama solely because of ethanol subsidies...
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Iowa not only voted for Obama, it allowed itself to be intimidated/manipulated in order to allow The Kenyan to get past Hillary Clinton in the caucuses. If that didn't wake the rest of the country up to the fact that we really ARE "idiots out walking around," the homosexual marriage ruling ought to have done the trick.
I had done some research into VeraSun back when their website was all happy and proud to boast that the (then) junior senator from Illinois had addressed a meeting of their shareholders, and that was my first indicator that Comrade Zero's people had successfully infiltrated what would have logically been enemy territory. Unfortunately, big ag is now reflexively statist, and if the government required all of Iowa's firstborns in exchange for a piece of the pie, plenty of people would bundle them up and set them out on the curb to be picked up for dispersal or disposal.
The ethanol plant in Dyersville is a beautiful complex, all shiny, new and efficient. The farmers loved it - well, they loved it until the checks didn't clear anymore - the local truckers loved it, the railroads loved it... in general, all God's chillun loved it except for the locals who put up one helluva fight over putting the plant there in the first place.
Mr. niteowl77
In other words, to quote Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon in Grumpier Old Men--
Lemon: C'mon, Max, let me in, it's cold out here.
Matthau: Here's a box of matches, set yourself on fire.
Cheers!
So, if all the gasoline now sold contains 10% ethanol, and it does here, is the price per gallon higher or lower because of the inclusion of subsidized ethanol?
Yes, I have found that it is wholly impractical to produce a drinkable beverage from petroleum, but from corn...this is ethanol’s market.
I have used ethanol/gasoline blends in my vehicles on and off for years. I consistently get about 10% less miles per gallon using an ethanol blend than with using straight gasoline. If the purpose of making ethanol a motor fuel additive is to reduce oil consumption how does a 10% ethanol blend that gives 10% less miles per gallon save anything?
1) Mandate use;
2) Subsidize;
3) Apply tariffs
The Feds will push the biofuel fantasy until they drive the nation into the ground.
Freepers have known this all along. Interesting that some people are waking up to reality.
Typical Democrats, symbolism over substance. Perception over reality. They don’t get it now, they won’t get it in the future. One more reason Democrats should never be elected to a political office.
“This does not include the petroleum required to farm, fertilize, water or transort the corn. Great use of natrual resorces.......”
WATER! The National Academy of Sciences recently published a report titled “Water Implications of Biofuel Production in the United States”. The paper outlines impacts and limitations on both water availability and water quality that would follow the pursuit of a national strategy to replace liquid fossil fuels with those made from biomass. COMMITTEE ON WATER IMPLICATIONS OF BIOFUELS PRODUCTION IN THE UNITED STATES http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3285
In some areas of the country, water resources already are significantly stressed. For example, large portions of the Ogallala (or High Plains) aquifer, which extends from west Texas up into South Dakota and Wyoming, show water table declines of over 100 feet. Deterioration in water quality may further reduce available supplies. Increased biofuels production adds pressure to the water management challenges the nation already faces.
It is equivalent to “mining” the water resource, and the loss of the resource is essentially irreversible.
Existing and planned ethanol facilities (2007) and their estimated total water use mapped
with the principal bedrock aquifers of the United States and total water use in year 2000.(Source USGS) Click to enlarge.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3285
The loss TRANSFER of wealth is going to be staggering.
The starry eyed true believers might be motivated by fantasies of saving Gaia but the politicians and their financial backers know its about money, and lots of it.
makes me wonder why Valero bought into this scam.
If it was like gasoline, one would have to pay for the right to prospect and extract (lease the field), and then pay a tax for the production, and then pay a tax for the retail sale. And then STILL be competetive with gasoline.
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