ethanol

Conventional wisdom says EPA will release the overdue 2014 ethanol mandate after Tuesday's midterm elections and lawsuits will follow, no matter what target is set for ethanol's share of the gasoline market.

The Energy Department says with ethanol and other oxygenates comprising 10 percent of the fuel supply for cars and light trucks, the energy content of gasoline has fallen by 3 percent over a 20-year period.

The Agriculture Department aims for a February launch for a revived government report on ethanol production, says a spokesman. It would be the first of several reports that USDA will produce after they were dropped by the Census Bureau during budget cuts in 2011.

With Abebgoa to open its $300 million celllulosic ethanol plant in Kansas on Friday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune says there is worry within the industry that debut of large-scale cellulosic plants in the United States may also be the closing act for big plants domestically.

Ethanol makers produced 14.15 billion gallons of ethanol during the 12 months ending on Sept 1, coinciding with the corn marketing year, says economist Darrell Good of U-Illinois.

The Agriculture Department said it is launching reports on ethanol production and flour milling, three years after the Census Bureau ended the reports due to budget cuts.

With corn prices down and fuel demand up, including exports, "(o)perating profits for many ethanol makers more than doubled in the second quarter compared with last year," says the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "It's shaping up to be one of the best years ever for the ethanol business."

The farmer-owned cooperative CHS, Inc. said it will cover "a significant portion of the cost to purchase and install an additional storage tank for the purpose of offering E15" at the 1,400 gas stations operating under its Cenex brand name.

With 2014 nearly two-thirds over, EPA sent its proposed biofuels mandate for this year to the White House for review, said The Hill newspaper, quoting an EPA official as saying the agency's goal "is to put the RFS (Renewable Fuels Standard) program on a path that supports continued growth in renewable fuels over time."

Recurrent drought has combined with a smaller cattle inventory to begin shifting the cattle industry, centered in the southern and central Plains, to the north and east, says Meatingplace in a seven-part story, "Dry Age Beef."

"Rep. Bruce Braley is betting the farm on corn — and Democrats’ hold on the Senate may be in danger if he’s wrong," says the lead sentence in Politico on the Senate campaign in Iowa. The Hawkeye state is No 1 i corn and ethanol production, with several thousand people working at ethanol plants. Braley

The ethanol mandate is likely to be set higher than initially proposed by the EPA, says Sen Al Franken, Minnesota Democrat, in comments quoted by The Hill newspaper. Franken was among 10 Democratic senators, including Agriculture chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, who met White House advisor John Podesta to discuss biodiesel.

Ethanol makers have enjoyed a run of high profits since March 2013, "driven by a combination of steady or rising ethanol prices and falling corn prices," write economists Scott Irwin and Darrel Good at farmdoc daily.

Rulemaking for this year's ethanol mandate "has been more time-consuming than originally anticipated," says the Environmental Protection Agency.

The two largest U.S. farm groups hold widely divergent views on the EPA proposal to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 30 percent in coming years.

In a report titled "Ethanol's Broken Promise," the Environmental Working Group says the scaled-back ethanol mandate proposed by EPA "would lower U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of 3 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2e) – as much as taking 580,000 cars off the road for a year." EWG says its figures take into account the effect of bringing more land into crop production.

Rising gasoline consumption could allow the EPA to set the ethanol mandate higher than it originally proposed, says Reuters. It says an industry source says there is enough leeway for EPA to set the mandate at 13.6 billion gallons for this year, compared to its November proposal of 13 billion gallons for corn-based ethanol.

Ethanol profitability hit a record high of $4.50 a bushel in the last week of March, $2 above the previous record, for a "representative Iowa ethanol plant," says economist Scott Irwin of U-Illinois at farmdocdaily. Profits surged because of high gasoline prices, comparatively low costs for corn, large exports, low inventories and a sluggish transport system.