Delusional Mandates It is hard to believe that just a few short years ago, Congress mandated a massive increase in usage of cellulosic ethanol. This was remarkable, because no commercial cellulosic ethanol facilities even existed […]
Rank the Top 10 Energy Stories of 2010
Platts’ annual survey of the Top 10 Energy Stories of 2010 is now open and will remain open until Christmas: The top 10 survey: what were the biggest oil stories of 2010? They listed about […]
Addressing Oil Company Subsidies
Following my recent essay on the elimination of the VEETC, the major ethanol subsidy in the U.S., some ethanol supporters argued for continuing the subsidies because oil companies receive subsidies. There are many versions of […]
Taxpayer Subsidized Ethanol Exports May Bite Industry in the Future
Ulterior Motives Behind the Ethanol Pipeline? Ethanol producers in the Midwest have lobbied for support to build a pipeline to ship their ethanol to the East Coast. As I have argued, given that the market […]
Addressing the Ethanol Rhetoric Over the Expiring VEETC
The Ethanol Rhetoric Ramps Up It has been interesting to watch the flurry of ethanol rhetoric since the recent elections. With the $0.45 per gallon subsidy (called the VEETC) and the ethanol tariffs both set […]
Inside Shell’s Bintulu GTL Plant
Bintulu. For many people involved with gasification, that word often invokes a specific image. In fact, colleagues know when I say “Bintulu” that’s shorthand for Shell’s Bintulu, Malaysia gas-to-liquids (GTL) facility (officially, the Shell Middle […]
Cleantech, Globalization and Energy Independence
The following guest essay is by Kevin P. Kane. Kevin is an Oil & Gas analyst and cleantech business consultant living in South Korea. Kevin previously published two widely circulated essays: American Freedom from Oil: […]
The Stroke of a Pen
Congress still hasn’t taken action to extend the redundant tax credits for compensating oil companies for blending the ethanol that they are required by law to blend, but that hasn’t stopped the ethanol lobby from […]
The Palm Oil Conundrum
People sometimes ask which biofuels are competitive head to head with crude oil. By competitive, I mean those that can actually compete favorably with oil prices on a level playing field (i.e., they don’t require […]
The U.S. Navy and Biofuels – Part III
This is the concluding installment of my recent interview with Tom Hicks, Deputy Assistant Secretary to the Navy (Energy). Part I discussed the overall goals of the Navy’s biofuel efforts, and in Part II we […]