[Wayne Maybury]

This is an extremely complicated subject to discuss as there are pros and cons to this product.

Firstly, ethanol is expensive to produce and no one would be making any of it for fuel purposes if the governemnt wasn't offering subsidies. Secondly, it isn't efficient and does nothing to reduce (never mind eliminate) reliance on petroleum as it takes more BTUs to produce it from corn than the final product yields. What that means is that more energy mainly in the form of petroleum is consumed in the production of ethanol than is produced.

However since MTBE is being removed from gasoline right now, ethanol is the only viable substitute that is readily available. Ethanol also burns very cleanly but yields poor mileage.

Much research has been done over the past two or three decades on developing an ethanol from cellulose process. It can be done in the lab and in pilot projects but it is still years away from economical full scale production.

By the way, Brazil isn't such a good example right now. They have reduced their ethanol level from 25 to 20% in gasoline and have eliminated import duties in an attempt to keep alcohol supply in balance with fuel demand. Brazil makes their ethanol from sugar cane and the price of sugar is at, or near, a 20 year high so the sugar cane is being sold as sugar and not being used to produce ethanol.

Wayne