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MORE ETHANOL FOLLIES: Engine Makers Sue To Block E15 Ethanol. ?Most car fuel sold around the countr?

By Glenn Reynolds

MORE ETHANOL FOLLIES: Engine Makers Sue To Block E15 Ethanol. “Most car fuel sold around the country is a mixture of 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gasoline, known as E10, but ethanol supplies, and Congressional mandates for using ethanol, are rising much faster than the market is absorbing the fuel. So in October, acting on the petition of an ethanol industry group, the agency approved a 15 percent blend known as E15, for cars from the 2007 model year and later. . . . The retailers are not enthusiastic about E15 for a variety of reasons. One is that most stations run off a single set of underground tanks, and if these are converted to E15 and only some cars can use that fuel, the stations would have nothing to offer other customers.” So we’ve got a surplus as a result of government subsidies. Now, of course, we have to have a mandate to try to overcome the subsidy-generated surplus. Then we’ll have mandate-generated distortions resulting from efforts to overcome the subsidy-generated surplus. Which will probably produce a subsidy to gas stations to help them deal with the mandate-generated distortions that were put in place to overcome the subsidy-generated surplus, after which . . . .

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on December 21, 2010 (boomark / email).