With California looking to skip ship on corn ethanol, many other participants in the government-funded US corn ethanol industry must be having second thoughts.
Is an ethanol pipeline connecting the badlands of the US interior to markets in states like California and New York really worth it? What kind of return would investors require to make up for the heightened risk, given the recent pleas by companies like BP to CARB in favor of ethanol from Brazil, where it has a major ethanol-producing operation, called Tropical Bioenergia, going on?
Such actions are widely expected to set the stage for the elimination of the tariff on imported ethanol, which was designed to harm American livestock producers.
The US Senate is standing by to help the tariff on its merry way into the dustbin of pork barrel politics history. On March 18, The New York Times reported that "(a) bipartisan group of senators is seeking to lower U.S. tariffs on ethanol imports to achieve 'parity' with the blender's credit, which was reduced in last year's farm bill. (…) A new Senate measure is aimed at knocking down the 54-cent-per-gallon import tariff and the 2.5 percent ad valorem tariff to achieve 'parity' with the lowered blender's tax credit.
"Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), one of the sponsors, said in a statement that the higher import tariff creates a barrier for sugarcane-based ethanol from Brazil, and hence gives gasoline imports a 'competitive advantage'.
"I believe this makes no sense -- particularly given our nation's continued addiction to oil imported from the Middle East and other hot spots, as well as the volatility of global markets for the fuels we put in our cars", said the senator from California.
Other sponsors of the bill are Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Mel Martinez (R-Fla.).
0 comments:
Post a Comment