The U.S. oil industry recently proclaimed that the U.S. federal biofuel mandate is “unworkable” and “should be repealed.” The industry should know. In addition to being the nation’s primary customer for ethanol and biodiesel, oil companies have invested more than $9 billion in biofuels, according to the American Petroleum Institute. Indeed, somewhere between 10 percent and 15 percent of all U.S. ethanol is now produced by oil companies.
Ethanol advocates argue that it’s no surprise America’s “big oil” companies would oppose the mandatory use of non-petroleum-based motor fuels. But as the statistics above show, it is not as if the oil industry hasn’t given biofuels the old college try. Moreover, the industry’s contention that “there’s a fundamental flaw” in the nation’s biofuel policy and the “only way to fix it is to scrap the law and start over” rings true.
