And the profits grow

[Kevin]

I'm very confused by this post. Who is organizing this "rip off"? How is it being done? Why will it drop once the Republicans are out of office?

I think Pete has it more or less correct. Demand is up worldwide, and supply can't grow like it used to. Price goes up, every economist in the world would tell you this is a no-brainer.

-Jester

Pretty much. Though I really do wonder what the market would be like if the US had done like Brazil and mandated all the infrastructure for ethanol back when Brazil did. Not saying the energy market in Brazil is an ideal case, but I've often wondered about that. I'm not sure how trustworthy http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_oil_...oil-consumption is (though it's pretty close to https://www.cia.govbrary/publications/th.../2174rank.html) but the US is still the biggest consumer in the world. If you are curious about production https://www.cia.govbrary/publications/th...r/2173rank.html lists that. The US produces about 40% of what it consumes. I didn't realize that the European Union only produced about 20% of what it consumed. But the US still chugs about 25% of all the oil produced in the world. It just makes me wonder where agricultural prices would be if we had done what Brazil had done. They still use a lot of oil and even if we didn't use it as a consumer fuel we would still use a lot for other industrial processes, but I do wonder.

I'm aware that Brazil gets most of it's ethanol from sugar cane and that the process is cheaper and faster for production than it is for corn, but after about 3 decades the country is pretty much energy independent last I checked. I can't imagine the US would be, and I don't know how well it would go over using flex fuel cars here (though many of the Brazilian flex fuel vehicles are manufactured by American companies, and much of the initial tech used for it was developed by the US manufacturers, which surprised me). Maybe our consumption would be down to 12 bbl/day instead of 20 bbl/day. Of course I'm not sure ethanol fuel prices would be lower.

It just feels to me like a case where over riding the free market to get results in the pipeline sooner would have been better. The US is now behind and paying more for it than planning ahead. It's one of the things I would have liked the government to have stuck it's nose in and there are a lot of other things it could have kept its nose out of to provide the resources. :)

I've been following the idea of using steam from nuclear plants for ethanol production a bit as well. It's already used in Canada for this purpose, and Russia and Switzerland have used steam from nuclear power plants for heating of local districts and other industrial applications. Not so much in the US because our nuclear plants are generally in rural areas, but if we are planning out ethanol production then that helps for that application since transporting corn gets expensive so building the ethanol plant near the existing nuclear plant helps. It's my understanding that around 50 of the US nuclear plants would meet the logistical requirements. It's an interesting proposal that since it has the world nuclear in it probably won't see the light of day.

And of course skipping the whole ethanol fuel and going right to fuel cell energy may prove to be a better long term option and Brazil may pay for that, but I don't think, that transition will take a long time as well and being energy independent during that time frame could prove hugely valuable. I know India and China are following in Brazil's footsteps on this a bit.

Oh well. Just an tangent to run this thread off into. I thought about getting into the Biofuels thread a bit with it, but I'm actually more interested in the higher level aspects.