An interesting comparison

St. Louis Gas Prices is reporting that drivers are paying an average of $2.984 at the pump today.

While doing a bit of research, I came across a June 20th, 2000 story in the Post-Dispatch on the debate between ethanol and oil companies.

"Oil and ethanol industry executives blamed each other Monday for rising gas prices as a congressional hearing sought to examine why drivers were paying more than $ 2 a gallon in cities such as Chicago and Milwaukee"

A little further down in the piece.

"The national average retail price for unleaded gasoline soared 5 cents from last week to $ 1.68 a gallon...The pump price is up 56 cents a gallon from last year and is the highest since the government began tracking weekly fuel prices a decade ago."

The ethanol bill signed by Governor Blunt can't come soon enough for some.

Missouri farmers expect to meet the 10% requirements laid out in the bill. They also believe that, nationally, farmers will be able to generate enough ethanol to handle 10% of U.S. gasoline demand by 2012.

Yet to reach the 2012 goal, it may be necessary to push even higher.

Testifying before the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on March 7th Frank Verrastro, director of the Center For Strategic and International Studies energy program, had this to say (The whole piece is worth reading, if you don't mind wonkish policy minutia).

"The mandated [2005 energy bill] target of producing 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol (fuel) by 2012 translates into roughly 490,000 b/d, representing approximately 3 percent of projected domestic transportation fuel needs in 2012 and less than 5 percent of total gasoline demand."

Local and regional output may vary and the integration of ethanol into the national gasoline markets is still in its infancy so the projections may be conservative.

Either way, increased ethanol has the potential to offset substantial amounts of oil use in domestic transportation.

There are still critics of ethanol from both the energy-conservation and inefficiency angles, but ethanol encompasses political, economic and environmental areas. Any gain in one is likely to pull from one or both the others. The debate will likely continue, but ethanol's place at the pump is, for now, assured.

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