"Thom Stewart" wrote in message
...
Hey JL,

I forwarded your Ethanol artictle to a Retired Oil Refinery Buddy of
mine. A good article. He was involve with the first Oil Crisis in the
'70's with Derby Oil in the Mid West. Thought you might be interested in
his reply


E-mail message

From: Date: Sat, Apr 29, 2006, 8:13pm (PDT+3) To:
Subject: Ethanol
Tom,
Thanks for the article on ethanol. It brought back old memories. With
the exception of the comments on gas mileage loss I agree with most
everything in the article. Our decision to use ethanol at Derby was
both political and economic. There were gasoline shortages in the
1970's. Being a midwest refiner using ethanol helped the farmer,
increased our gasoline production, increased the octane right at the
time lead was being fazed out of gasoline.We got a big enough tax credit
to offset the added cost of the ethanol
Whether the production of ethanol consumes more energy than it produces
was a consideration as was the loss in mileage. Calculating the cost of
producing ethanol has to include the cost of plowing the field,
fertilizer how the byproducts are priced and a whole bunch of ot
factors. The state of Nebraska in the 1970's was using ethanol in
there patrol cars and reporting no loss in mileage. Ethanol is a good
solvent and it was thought that it cleaned up the fuel system enough to
offset the theoretical los from using a product that is partially
oxidized (ethanol)
It was a good article and one that should be understood. We've got the
same problem with the publics (And Bush) regarding just what all the
statements about how these ideas really effect our planning. This
applies to the use of hydrogen. Which seems like a worse idea than
ethanol.

http://community.webtv.net/tassail/ThomPage

Hmmm. A retired oil refinery employee speaking out against EToH. Now
there's another big surprise.

Max