White House walking a tight rope between corn farmers and refinery workers on ethanol

Fuel Fix:
Texas politicians are ramping up the pressure on President Donald Trump to pull back a federal ethanol mandate that created to reduce the nation's thirst for oil.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas and other Republican senators met with President Donald Trump Thursday to discuss changes, following an announcement by the Environmental Protection Agency earlier this year it would slightly increase biofuels mandates for 2018 and would not make changes to the program long sought by Republicans from oil rich states.

In a letter in late October, Cruz and eight other Republican Senators, including Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., asked Trump to meet, so they could "discuss a pathway forward toward a mutually agreeable solution."

"If your administration does not make adjustments or reforms on matters related to the renewable fuel standard, it will result in a loss of jobs around the country, particularly in our states," the letter read.
...

Trump is "aware that workers in the refining sector believe the program isn't working as intended, and should be improved to reduce their compliance burdens," a White House spokesman said. "He will listen to the concerns of senators who represent these workers, with the hope of finding common ground."

During the meeting Trump encouraged senators to find a solution that was "win-win" for refineries, biofuels producers and consumers, said a lobbyist briefed on the meeting.

Cruz was granted the meeting after holding up a confirmation vote in the senate on Bill Northey, Trump's nominee to be a undersecretary of agriculture.

But the White House faces opposing pressure from politicians in the Midwest, a region for which the more than decade old mandate has created an economic boom through increased demand for corn - the principal source of ethanol in this country.

Earlier this week Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, downplayed the White House meeting with Cruz, telling the Des Moines Register, "the president keeps doing what he's told the voters of Iowa, me and Sen. (Joni) Ernst so many times — that he supports ethanol."
...
Ethanol is a bad deal for everyone but corn farmers and agribusiness interests.   The refiners are caught in the middle, but for consumers ethanol really sucks. 

It makes operating small engines expensive because you either have to drain teh tank each time you use equipment or pay to have a repair shop get the crude out of the equipment so the engine will run again.  It is a hidden expense to drivers who not only have to pay for the refiners' purchase of the RINs, but you also get lousier milage from each gallon of fuel.

If given a choice I would never buy fuel with ethanol.  Never.  What does it say about a product that it is so crappy that you have to pass a law to make people buy it?  If it were really a value-added additive you would not need a mandate.  Corn farmers should go back to selling their product for food.  As a fuel it not worth it.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains