Ethanol transport to become big priority
By Dave Hannon -- Purchasing, 1/17/2007 4:33:00 PM
As President Bush unveils a new emphasis on biofuels in his upcoming State of the Union speech next week, demand for ethanol will increase even further—but is the U.S. infrastructure prepared to handle the demand?
According to some sources, Bush could call for more than 60 billion gallons a year of ethanol to be mixed into U.S. gasoline supplies by 2030, a massive increase from the 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol use by 2012 required by current U.S. law.
In a recent Reuters story, Monte Shaw, president of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, says the transportation infrastructure in place will not be enough to handle the increased demand for ethanol in the near future.
"Railroads didn't start planning four or five years ago to make the upgrades that would be ideal for right now," Shaw told the Reuters Global Biofuels Summit, adding that building new pipelines for the increased ethanol couldn’t be done without government help.
However, Don Endres, CEO of VeraSun Energy Corp. said at the same conference he thinks “The railroad is really a great virtual pipeline. Wherever we want to ship this product, we can very easily ship it."
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