Seems everyone wants to play the blame game about the cost of gas, the Left blame the right, saying its Bush’s fault, the right point back to Bill Clinton vetoing the law to allow us to explore and drill in parts of the USA. Then we have those who blame congress since the Left took over. Seems gas prices have gone up 67% since they took control of congress. What most people fail to understand is that Both China and India have increased their consumption of oil, so with the increase from both of those countries combined with the silly regulations that our own Government (USA) puts out, it makes it even harder to figure out who to blame. Since the Petroleum refiners in the US must meet the EPA’s federal fuex oxygenate requirement from Title ll of the Clean Act Amendments of 1990, add that with the law that refiners are required to drain all winter fuel from their tanks before replacing it with summer fuel, and this must be done by April 1^st. Now before I started reading this I had no idea there was a difference in winter/summer fuel. Now that’s just the Feds, then the states get to add their own formulas, so we have in the US more the 40 different types of fuel requirements depending on which state you happen to live in. I sit here shaking my head about this.

Now we get to the not in my backyard, most folks do not want a refinery built around them, nor do they wish to have storage tanks or tank farms as they are called built near them. So we have another strike against the cost of gas.

Now back in 2004 there were some changes made that lawmaker new was going to drive the cost of gas up, now I am no expert on this, but it has something to do with lowering the sulfuric content which cost companies more money to refine the product, which mean the price at the pump was going to go up. Add that to the fact the oil companies are going to spend more on having to meet this demand from the Feds which will mean less output from the refineries here in the states.

Now we could lay the blame on the green people, saying it’s all their fault, however that would be wrong as well.

Let’s look at the Country of Brazil, they buy flex cars, which means it can run on gas or alcohol, which is ethanol that is produced from sugar, this can been done with corn, or beets as well. So they have a choice on how they fuel their vehicles. As of 2005 in the US there were only 4 million flex cars on the road. Not sure how many we have now, but am guessing a few more.

There are more ways to produce ethanol; wood is a prime example, while its being turned into paper there is another substance that it has which is called xylan. Xylan can be fermented to produce ethanol.

So here is the question, why with just these few ways to reduce the USA dependence on oil have we not embraced these alternative fuels?