Saturday, February 18, 2006

Ethanol’s Corn Usage

In the last 4 years corn used for ethanol production has increased by over 50% from 996 million bushels to and estimated 1,500 million bushel in this current marketing year. In the last 10 years corn usage for ethanol has tripled, resulting in higher commodity prices for farmers and an alternative fuel source for the USA.

Presently there are 95 ethanol plants in operation with another 31 under construction and nine going thru expansions. It is expected that another 50 to 70 new plants will be built in the next 7 years.

Ethanol production is estimated at 5 billion gallons of fuel for 2006, up from 4 billion gallons in 2005. At $2/gallon that is $10 billion/year that we save in foreign reserves as a country.

1 comment:

BoomtownUSA said...

We only import about 25% of our natural gas consumption in the USA, with 95% of that coming from Canada. The development of the new natural gas pipeline from Alaska to the lower 48 will give us even more natural gas capacity and stability. I also believe that there is much less of a chance of a supply disruption from Canada than there is with oil from the Middle East.