"Fuelguru" > wrote
> The biofuels industry is responding to OPEC's claims that ethanol is
> the reason for high gas prices. Yeah right! Ethanol keeps the prices
> lower.

That is arguable at best. The cost of producing ethanol from corn (like
it is done in the US) is actually very high. It is very inefficient
(granted, it will improve over time), and it consumes food crop, so it
has negative effect on food prices. Ethanol price is
government-subsidized with tax money that could have been used for other
purposes (education, healthcare, paying off national debt, etc.). In
addition, using ethanol-blended gasoline (E85) results in degraded fuel
economy, so you end up using more of it.

But I do see the benefit of using biofuels to reduce our reliance on
oil. It's just that currently this benefit comes at a pretty high
price.

Pete