Here's the skinny on corn

Last time, I said I'd go into the whole corn fiasco a little bit. You remember corn, right? It's the grain that grows on ears, right?; usually golden in color? Gold it is, because corn growers are taking their crops to the bank right now, big time, and it's all because they have a better lobby than the lumber industry.





Ever heard of MTBE? It WAS a gasoline additive - a really good one, I might add. It was developed in response to the EPA's mandate for "oxygenates" in gasoline sold in ozone non-attainment areas. Here in Texas, most of the major metropolitan areas of the state are in such areas (Harris, Bexar and Travis counties, for example). MTBE is an abbreviation for Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether; the base molecule of the compound is a simple alcohol, the single carbon Methyl Alcohol, or methanol for short. When gasoline was no longer allowed to contain lead, gasoline blending operations had to find another compound to boost the octane in gasoline (actually, gasoline has NO octane in it - it's an 8 carbon molecule all right, but it's called Isopentane). At first they added whatever they could. Benzene, a common chemical in industrial operations, was the first weapon of choice. It was relatively cheap and it burns REAL good, but it's also a known carcinogen. When it was decided that benzene wasn't such a good idea, Butane was often added. (Yes, butane; just like in cigarette lighters) The problem there was that it made the gasoline TOO volatile - it evaporated at much too high a rate and caused that haze we see in the air in major cities. So, it was decided that a new material would have to be chosen to replace these other octane boosters. MTBE was chosen.





MTBE is volatile, but not as volatile as butane. It has a characteristic ether odor, but isn't narcotic like ethyl ether and has no known carcinogenic health effects. It was perfect! Remember when I said that the base unit of the compound is Methanol? Well, methanol is made from wood ("wood alcohol"), and tree huggers don't like the idea of someone cutting down a tree to make fuel (does anyone remember "wood?"), so they decided to do whatever they could to stop the use of MTBE in gasoline. First, they said that it causes cancer. Well, it had been thoroughly tested on laboratory animals for that, but it WAS fairly new and there was no human data available ("epidemiology"), so the allegation that MTBE causes cancer created quite a stir, but not enough to make it go away. Infrastructure for MTBE delivery had been developed; the compound was easy enough to manufacture and it was relatively cheap, so junk science that accused the compound of carcinogenic capability was basically ignored. Then, it was discovered that MTBE was showing up in underground water in various parts of the country. MTBE vapor from fuel storage and/or delievery facilities was being dissolved by rainwater and was emerging in aquifers, so MTBE was outlawed and the search for a new "oxygenate" was begun. That's when the fight began, because big agriculture wanted ethyl alcohol to become the oxygenate of choice and the lumber people said that methyl alcohol ("wood alcohol") should be used. Well, let's examine this, shall we? The infrastructure for methanol was already in place (recall that methanol is the base compound in MTBE) and not a lot of tweaking would be necessary to replace MTBE with pure methanol. Methanol manufacturing, storage, delivery, and blending facilities were already under contract and functioning in MTBE service. No overhead! What did ethanol offer? There was little or no manufacturing capability (at least not on anywhere NEAR the scale necessary for use as a gasoline additive), no means of moving ethanol from the corn fields to refineries, and little or no plan in place to make any of that happen in a timely manner. Anyone ever hear of the law of supply and demand? When something is in great demand, prices go up until supplies catch up. So, which choice made more sense from practically every standpoint imagineable? Uhh...methanol, of course! So why did ethanol win out? The agriculture lobby is stronger than the lumber lobby and corn is supposedly more friendly to the environment than lumbering!

Uh...last time I checked, trees were a renewable resource just like corn! Granted, it takes longer for a tree to grow than a stalk of corn, but the machinery was already there! Meanwhile, consumers are paying out the wazoo for the shortsightedness of Congress and their inability to fight for a good decision on behalf of their constituents because some lobbyist made a better campaign contribution than some other lobbyist. Will ethanol ever catch up with what methanol would have been from the start? Well, eventually, I suppose - as long as corn supplies can keep up with demand. What happens when that next two-year drought hits? Does anyone remember 4 or 5 years ago when corn fields were burning up all over the country? Well, I guess time will tell.

Enjoy $4.00 a gallon gasoline - it's right around the corner and there's little or nothing we can do about it as things stand now. - Dan