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Flip-flopping on ethanol

Posted at 5:02 PM on April 2, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Energy

Time to hit the wayback machine again.

"Corn and ethanol production and the resulting high prices will impact the world in a much more acute negative way than greenhouse gas emissions and climate change ever will," Valero Energy Corp Chief Executive Bill Klesse told an oil group last March in San Diego. "All of these programs are just a huge transfer of wealth from our industry to the Midwest farms."

That was before Valero bought the VeraSun ethanol plants in Minnesota and other states in the Midwest. Today, the company announced it intends to run them at full throttle.

Comments (3)

I vote we go back to horses and plows.

Posted by Elizabeth H-P | April 2, 2009 9:59 PM

Heh. I noted that turnaround too, Bob. While a lot of attention has been focused on an oil refiner turning into a oil AND ethanol refiner (diversification is good, no?), less has been said about a more important (and local) purchase of VeraSun plants, namely the move by Mankato-based AgStar to buy two 100,000 gal. facilities in MN. The word is local farmers plan to invest in these as a co-op.

Ethanol is going back to its roots in MN, and that's a good thing.

Posted by Bob Moffitt | April 3, 2009 7:04 AM

"All of these programs are just a huge transfer of wealth from our industry to the Midwest farms."
Sounds like a good thing to me there Bill!! As an employee of a MN ethanol plant that is in its 10th year of production I can tell you the money that our plant makes for our investors stays in MN. Why support the bad guys in the Middle East when you can support family farmers of MN? We'll see what other PR stunts Valero (Big Oil) will try and pull now that they are in the ethanol industry.

Posted by JT | April 3, 2009 8:13 AM