Oil Industry Stages Another Sham Anti-Ethanol Press Conference

Oil industry delivering another batch of, ummm, malarkey.

By Marc J. Rauch
Exec. Vice President/Co-Publisher
THE AUTO CHANNEL

AUTO CENTRAL - January 29, 2013: This morning, the American Petroleum Institute held their latest telephone press conference in their continuous attempt to undermine any alternative fuel solutions and keep us addicted to gasoline.

The information released by the API today during the press conference added nothing new or significant in their fallacious assault on ethanol…except one thing. The two presenters took on the surprisingly conciliatory pretense of “having nothing against ethanol.” They went so far as to say that there are fine “blending qualities” about ethanol.

They just don’t want it living in their neighborhood, so to speak.

API did what they have done for decades: they made up lies and insinuations, and they mischaracterized ethanol. To listen to them, anyone would think that vehicles that run on gasoline never experience any engine breakdowns or system failures, and that fuel pumps, fuel lines, pistons and cylinder walls only ever show signs of wear if alcohol somehow gets into the fuel system. They warned about consumers experiencing roadside breakdowns and costly repairs because of E15 use. What? Are they suggesting that the millions of vehicles that have broken down over the past 100-years only broke down because they used fuel other than gasoline?

To use the old phrase made contemporary again by Joe Biden: The API is full of malarkey.

The API guys stated, yet again, that the EPA prematurely approved the use of E15 in vehicles manufactured since 2001. API says that there hasn’t been sufficient study. They conveniently ignore the fact that alcohol/ethanol has been used in vehicle engines since the mid-1850’s; that virtually every independent study of gasoline vs. ethanol shows ethanol is the superior engine fuel; and that even the automobile industry’s top scientists (including the General Motors guys who invented leaded gasoline) believed that ethanol is the better fuel. They also ignore the fact that there are other countries on this planet that have relied on ethanol and various ethanol-gasoline blends for years, with no problems other than those that are customarily experienced by internal combustion engines.

In addition, they gloss over the fact that the government’s testing laboratories didn’t just take up the study of ethanol as an engine fuel in the past couple of years; they have studied ethanol and different blend levels for many, many years. Moreover, Ricardo Laboratories – the world’s leading and most respected private lab dealing with fuel issues – did its own study that shows that E15 can be used in all vehicles going back to the early 1990’s.

They have also mischaracterized, again, the EPA’s E15 waiver; making it sound like it wasn’t just a recommendation, but that it is a mandated imperial order. They referred to a recent AAA warning about E15 causing engine damage as if AAA conducted their own conclusive testing of the fuel. But AAA didn’t, they relied on the lies given to them by the oil lobby and then invented some of their own gross exaggerations to make the warning seem more urgent. It’s just more malarkey; hot stinky grotesque batches of malarkey.

But perhaps the single stupidest misstatement that the two presenters made today is when they characterized ethanol as being dangerously corrosive. Let me remind everyone that ethanol is alcohol. Alcohol can be consumed; it can be rubbed on your body; it is used to clean and disinfect sensitive medical instruments that are used on internal organs of the human body; and you can leave an open container of alcohol in a closed room without killing any people who may be in the room. Try doing these things with gasoline. And, if you only use gasoline and you experience water related problems such as freezing, you add alcohol to the gasoline to solve the problem. In my estimation, if there is something that’s bad in ethanol, it’s the gasoline that's added to the alcohol to denaturize it.

The petroleum oil industry is controlled by foreign regimes and terrorist groups who want to keep us addicted to gasoline. Regardless of where and how the oil is found, it is controlled by OPEC. There are no “American” petroleum oil companies; they are international companies who may have offices here. They hire uninformed PR know nothings to spread their lies and they bribe politicians to keep us using their poison.

Even if ethanol caused some or all of the engine problems that the oil industry pretend that it does, the solution is not to not use ethanol. The solution is to ban the use of gasoline as an engine fuel and to mandate that all engine components be manufactured with regard to alcohol use. And of course, the ethanol should be produced in America by Americans. Simply put, I’d much rather have my fuel money go to American farmers than foreign terrorists.