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Gutknecht confident about ethanol's future Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Agri News staff writer
ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Renewable fuels were one of the main items Rep. Gil Gutknecht, R-Rochester, spoke about at last week's Agri News Farm Show in Rochester.
Gutknecht said he's supporting a 10 percent ethanol blend requirement by 2010 for the nation. He was in the White House recently to speak to senior officials about renewable fuels.
"We spend $700 million per day buying oil from countries that don't like us," he said while eating a ham sandwich he bought from the Olmsted County Pork Producers and drinking a chocolate milk from the Olmsted County American Dairy Association.
That number is projected to increase in the future to $1 billion per day, and Gutknecht wants to stop all that money leaving the country. He said if we could keep half of that money in the United States in renewable fuels, it could bolster the economy.
"It stays in our checkbooks," he said.
Gutknecht cited a recent conversation of his with the secretary of energy, who was talking about how difficult it is to build new fuel refineries in the United States.
"I said, 'We've built 93 in the last five years,'" Gutknecht said. "And we'll build 93 more in the next five years."
The difference was the secretary of energy meant oil and Gutknecht was referring to ethanol. He said 25 percent of the oil refineries are in areas that could be hit during hurricane season, but ethanol plants are distributed throughout the country.
What the ethanol industry needs is access to markets, Gutknecht said.
"If we guarantee access to ethanol markets, they will fill that void," he said. Farmers have demonstrated that they are able to meet the demand. "We'll make more."
In the long-term, Gutknecht said corn can't make all the alcohol for ethanol production. Other ag products will enter the market, but Gutknecht said most of those haven't been decided. However, opportunities will then exist for other Minnesota crop producers to enter that value-added market.
"The market ultimately will sort out the most efficient way to produce it," he said.
"This is a country that has always been able to do big things," he said, citing winning World War II in three and a half years as one example. |
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