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US Biodiesel Refiners On Hold Pending Tax Credit Renewal

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  January 6th, 2010 at 05:00 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

US biodiesel operating rates plunge near zero

6 Jan 2010 , Houston : Operating rates for the US biodiesel industry is [sic] approaching “zero percent” as Congress waits on a vote to extend a blending tax credit that would help producers make sales, sources said on Tuesday.

Biodiesel refining in the country ground to a halt after the Senate said it would not vote on extending a $1/gal (€0.18/litre) blending tax credit until members returned from Christmas break. Without that credit, biodiesel producers cannot sell their material at prices competitive with traditional diesel.

…Some material is still being produced to meet individual state mandates, but the combined 84m gal/year (318m litres/year) needed for Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Oregon is but a sliver of the total 2.9bn/gal year US capacity.

We’ve seen oil-rich countries in the Middle East, Indonesia and Mexico wreck their economies by subsidizing fuel for their masses.

Why would “green” fuel subsidies – in effect, the government paying refiners to make what would otherwise be a noncompetitive product – be any different for our economy?

The House passed legislation to extend the biodiesel credit in December. The Senate, being otherwise occupied before Christmas, will not consider the measure until late January at the soonest.

With lows forecast around -10F later this week in Minneapolis, I’m guessing that the demand for biodiesel isn’t all that great anyway.

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COMMENTS

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  • Common_Cents

    Strike that, they passed a law in Minneapolis saying you can’t leave your car running more than a few minutes. News crews were out shortly after recording city trucks running for hours.

    Reality, ain’t it a biotch.

  • 10ksnooker

    Coal to liquids refineries are your game.

    Proved technologies, heck it was invented in the 1920s and used by the WWII NAZIs to run their war machine. China is now doing it now in production. Produces diesel fuel at about $35 a barrel oil equivalent. google “Fischer-Tropsch”

    Come to think of it, why aren’t we doing it since our coal reserves are about 30% of the planet’s. We do want energy independence, don’t we?

    The rest of this looney green tech is just a cost loser.

    • http://www.thehayride.com MacAoidh

      …between those two and increased domestic oil drilling, we can meet all of our transportation fuel needs without one drop of oil from anywhere else save Canada.

      If, that is, we put aside 30 years of unmitigated stupidity and embrace nuclear power for our grid like France and Japan have.

  • jackhammer

    people could not eat oil…..

    but people can most everything that is grown for Bio-Diesel, or at least could eat off the land that is used to grow that.

    It could possibly be different for supposed upcoming technology to use bio mass like corn husks, but that is future talk, and not politically expedient becasue ti does not benefit farmers looking for subsidies.

    I had a big fight with an uncle with a farm in Germany who put in a big Bio-Diesel plant with guaranteed government subsidies,a dn now he and all the other farmers in the region grow corn, which was never grown there before, and the wheat they used to grow is no longer around. I told him it is anti-human….after my explanation he seemed to agree, but he had already invested $2 million into it, and had to make it work….

    But it is government greenwashing and it is really an abomination to people in the world who are starving, but we know most enviros hate people.

    Burn what you can’t eat and what you find underground, and use the land above ground to provide for people…..

    • mdyou

      …cannot be explained to a libtard.

  • dennism

    except for one night this week. A guy in a focus group told Hannity he was against ALL oil drilling. He would end it all if he were in charge. He wanted alternative fuels.

    I hope we produce enough purple biofuel for schmucks like that to drink.

    • izoneguy

      Many people in this country are just plain stupid. People that talk like that probably sit around the shack waiting for the government handouts. American, probably more than any other country runs on oil. Of course we should do all we can to conserve. America also has the largest oil reserves on earth. You want to crush terrorism? Drill baby drill. We could rein economic chaos to Iran, Russia, Venezuela & countries of that ilk…..it would not take a war, we would not have to fire a shot…..put hundreds of thousands of Americans to work and
      become energy independent – THIS is about the only way America will dig itself out of the hole that the socialists have created.

      Of course the right will have to declare war on the nanny state, the EPA, the Energy Dept. and all the leftist judges that hold up oil drilling. I would love to see Exxon/Mobil stock surge to an all time high.

      This woman is the enemy of America…..

      • Scope

        The only quibble I have with your comment, the US will never be “energy independent”, but, we need to be dependent on our own resources. If the Libs and the tree huggers would be disqualified from any energy plans, we have more than enough resources to take us into the next century and probably beyond. What oil and gas and coal is on our lands will not stop forming because we extract them. It’s like thinking that the world only started when one was born.

        • Richard Mullins

          …we would be closer to energy independence. Really, we should make them their actions match their words 100%.

        • izoneguy

          The ONLY way to EVER create a renewable energy source is to open the floodgates to innovation sans government interference.

          Imagine if during WWII when the Manhattan Project was being developed we had a government like we have today?
          We would be speaking a dialect of Russo/Germanic…..
          and the Jews would have been a footnote to history.

          This is how serious of a situation we are in. People are
          driven by the days stock market prices are the quarterly GDP reports.

          I have studied history since I was in the 4th grade. I was reading about WWII when I was 10 years old. I find it fascinating with a perverse sense of humor that many people under the age of 30 don’t have a clue. That is the key to Obama’s success – make them Obamatrons and keep the blinders on – here – listen to your iPods and shut up…..

          What the under 30 crowd does not realize is that America can become the 21st Century version of East Germany if they keep voting for their beloved bleeding heart liberals.

          • Scope

            Beck had a great show tonight. If “green energy” was even viable, the free market would have found it long ago. Capitalism promotes those innovators and entreapuners (sp) that will find, create, and make profits on the next greatest ideas. There is a reason that the green technologies, such as wind and solar panels have not gained any momentum, in this country at least. There is no profit to make in those industries in the US. Unions make it impossible to compete with the wages paid in probably every other country. Those wages are another whole discussion.

    • http://www.thehayride.com MacAoidh

      …”out of town relatives” the friends of the family inevitably get saddled with and so try to dump on you for a short respite from their own holiday miseries.

      This guy started launching into how we need to tax gasoline $3 or $4 a gallon, because the planet is overheating.

      I told him his policies were stupid and cruel, and that he should come to Louisiana and explain why he hates us and wants us to starve. And also why he wants to create malnourished children among America’s poor. And that all of what he seeks to put in place is based on a provable lie told to him by people who want to destroy our freedoms.

      I told him this in a very calm, polite voice, looked him in the eye while saying it and then shut up. All he could say, in a rather uncertain voice was, “No, that’s ridiculous.” And an uncomfortable silence settled over the table. I asked him if he was familiar with the CRU scandal, and he said “that’s just a bunch of e-mails.” Then I asked him if he was aware that CRU had thrown out 40 percent of the Russian weather stations – where it’s cold – in formulating their global temperature data, and he had no idea what I was talking about.

      He said that polar bears are almost extinct, which I told him was a lie. Then he said that sea levels were rising because of the Arctic ice cap melting, and that I certainly could understand that being from Louisiana and seeing the coastal erosion going on here, and I told him that was a lie, too, because Archimedes’ principle of bouyancy shows that solid masses floating in water displace their weight in water and arctic ice melting has no net effect on sea levels – and also that Louisiana’s coastal loss isn’t uniform and the coastline is actually advancing in the Atchafalaya delta, where the river hasn’t been leveed.

      This guy had no answer for any of it. He just shook his head.

      I then explained to him that he was ill-equipped to argue with me, because he gets his information from CNN and the Washington Post and they’ve made him ignorant. I told him that virtually everything he believes is a fraud and he should be extremely angry at the people who have lied to him.

      Later in the conversation his wife told me that Ayn Rand is her favorite author, and then said Rand was a socialist. I just put my head in my hands.

      These were the “intellectuals” who live inside the Beltway. The wife was a schoolteacher for 30 years. I kid you not.

      • izoneguy

        I just send this article to Global warming weenies…..

        http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2795981/Supernova-may-wipe-out-the-Earth.html

  • Scope

    that mandated a blend of ethanol with gasoline? How about the subsidies that the ethanol corn growers, such as Archer Daniels, are getting from the feds with the “farm subsidies”? How does that affect the taxing of blended fuels? and, who does it affect? just those states that have passed those mandates?

  • http://impudent.blognation.us/blog kyle8

    Crucifying America on a cross of Corn.

  • bobojake
  • http://www.dcworksforus.com Kenny Solomon

    ……. when $15/gallon for gas was inexpensive.

    ……. when you could legally buy gas if you were a Republican.

    ……. when cars ran on anything other than fuel from the corn we all used to eat.

    I’ll stop now.

    • http://www.the41stvote.org rcov092

      for life!

  • Third Street
  • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister