GoodFuels

US and Brazil Ethanol Updates

The International Fuel Ethanol Workshop is equal opportunity for all producers.

Tuesday’s general session featured updates from both Brazil and the United States, with Joel Velasco of the Brazilian Sugar Cane Industry Association and Bob Dinneen of the Renewable Fuels Association. Rather than being competitors, these two guys are friends, as you can see by the photo. As they say, a rising tide carries all boats and that is certainly true as the ethanol tide continues to rise globally.

Dinneen gave the industry a rousing pep talk, urging them to persevere against the negative media campaign being waged by Big Oil and Big Food. “This is going to be a difficult summer, but we’re going to get through it, and we are going to come out of this a stronger industry.”

“You are the strength of this industry, you are the reason we will get through it, but we have to come together, we have to use our strength, we have to write op-eds, we have to comment to EPA, we have to let our members of Congress know that vilifying America’s farmers and America’s only domestic renewable fuel doesn’t make sense,” Dinneen said passionately.

Dinneen urged the industry to file comment with the EPA on the request by Texas to waive half of the Renewable Fuels Standard. The comment period ends on Monday and information about how to make comments can be found on the RFA website, ethanolrfa.org.

Following Bob, Joel talked about the victory over oil that has been achieved in Brazil.

“In the beginning of February of this year, ethanol consumption surpassed that of gasoline,” Joel said. “My friends, that is a big victory. The oil company now is in a corner.”

Velasco says Brazilian consumers are choosing to put 100 percent ethanol in their tanks and “saying forget about gasoline.”

Listen to Bob’s address here:

Listen to Joel here:

See a photo album with pictures from this week’s Fuel Ethanol Workshop here:

2008 Fuel Ethanol Workshop Photo Album

Check DomesticFuel.com for full coverage of the Fuel Ethanol Workshop, sponsored by RFA.

IEA Warns of Oil Crunch

Oil production will not keep up with global demand, predicts the International Energy Agency, the paris-based watchdog that is in the middle of its comprehensive assessment of the world’s top 400 oil fields.

For several years, the IEA has predicted that supplies of crude and other liquid fuels will arc gently upward to keep pace with rising demand, topping 116 million barrels a day by 2030, up from around 87 million barrels a day currently. Now, the agency is worried that aging oil fields and diminished investment mean that companies could struggle to surpass 100 million barrels a day over the next two decades.

With such a dark prediction for the future of energy production, what do they suggest will help overcome this obstacle? Correctly, the IEA, like the US Department of Energy, suggest that supplementing oil imports with domestic ethanol can provide a solution.

The U.S. Energy Department’s own forecasting shop, the Energy Information Administration, has long stuck to the same demand-driven methodology as the IEA, assuming that supply will keep up with the world’s growing hunger for oil. But the U.S. agency also has embarked on its own supply study, which it hopes to complete this summer. Like the IEA, its preliminary findings are somewhat gloomy: They suggest daily output of conventional crude oil alone, now about 73 million barrels, will plateau at 84 million barrels, and that it will take a significant uptick in production of nonconventional fuels such as ethanol to push global fuel supplies over 100 million barrels a day by 2030.