After two difficult weeks of work, Congress will recess this afternoon for two more weeks off. Knowing members will return home to face constituents alarmed about gas prices that may top $3.00 per gallon during summer vacation time, Big Oil took the opportunity this morning to pass along some misinformation to Congress about why it is not responsible for hig gas prices.
Notwithstanding oil companies’ record profits, the real culprit of high gas prices, according to this morning’s letter to every member of Congress, is ethanol:
[Refiners] face complicated challenges in switching to ethanol, which has numerous logistical difficulties in its transport. Unlike MTBE, ethanol cannot be shipped through pipelines. Ethanol is also currently more expensive than gasoline, and imports face a 54 cent per gallon tariff.
These factors place further pressure on a gasoline marketplace in which demand is already chasing an increasingly tight supply.
So, be prepared when your local MSM starts touting the oil company line that ethanol — a fuel additive grown in America by American farmers and that reduces greenhouse gas emissions from cars by 20% — is the reason you are paying $3.00 a gallon. It’s not true.
1) Oil companies are switching to ethanol by choice. The latest energy bill included no provisions banning the use of MTBE. But because MTBE makers “were not granted the liability protection they wanted in the energy bill, they are abandoning MTBE sooner rather than later.”
2) Ethanol will actually make fueling our cars far less expensive. Within ten years, we could produce biofuels at costs equal to between $0.59 and $0.91 per gallon of gasoline, and $0.86 per gallon of diesel.
3) Global warming is a security threat now, and ethanol will be a critical tool to set America free from imported oil while dramatically reducing our amount of greenhouse gas emissions.
It’s bad enough that Big Oil spreads its misinformation in Washington. Let’s stop the spin there.
– Denis McDonough
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