GoodFuels

Waiting for Word on Waiver

The ethanol industry is holding its collective breath today as the highly-anticipated decision by the Environmental Protection Agency on whether to grant a partial waiver of the Renewable Fuels Standard will be announced Thursday afternoon.

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson and Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator Robert Meyers will hold a press conference at 1 pm eastern time to officially answer the request from Texas Governor Rick Perry to cut the RFS ethanol blending requirements by 50 percent.

According to the Houston Chronicle, Gov. Perry sent a letter to Johnson this week responding “to challenges to his request filed with the environmental agency after the public comment period ended July 23. Fifty-five pages accompanied the letter.”

In his letter, Perry acknowledged that corn, diesel and crude oil prices have “retreated” in the past month. But, he wrote, “the fundamental problems adversely affecting our well-being remain and could worsen when those prices begin to escalate again, as they probably will.”

“This view is contrary to what would seem to be conventional wisdom and as espoused by the proponents of the ethanol mandates who claim that ethanol is suppressing the price of gasoline at the pump. But it is true nonetheless.”

Gotta love that - contrary to conventional wisdom but true nonetheless - because two “experts” say so. But, as Mark Twain once said, truth is more of a stranger than fiction.

We await the decision of the judges.