Reckless Refinery Exemptions Hurt Our Most Crucial Industry: FARMING

Exemptions are tantamount to removing tobacco-use restrictions

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

We're well into the 21st Century, the century after the century that experienced our planet's worst wars...wars that were all caused by, or fought over, petroleum oil. We've put people into space, onto another celestial body, defeated many of the most deadly diseases, and our great advances in technology allow people to have instantaneous visual and audio communication with just about anyone else anywhere in the world.

Yet, here we are still stuck relying on poisonous fuels made from the same petroleum oil that gave us all those global conflicts that killed hundreds of millions of people, and permanently disabled many millions more. It is unconscionable.

Naw, it's more than unconscionable, it's thoughtlessly inhumane.

Take all the horrors of the worst societal and environmental nightmares, roll them all together, and that's what the petroleum oil industry gives us. Do you hate the idea of killing innocent young life? Do you hate the idea of age and race euthanasia? Do you hate the wanton killing of wildlife? Do you hate smog filled skies and polluted water? Do you hate living in a world constantly threatened by terrorism? If you do, then turn your enmity to the petroleum oil industry. The oil industry gets away with this all by paying off politicians, academics, and media spokespeople - not all, but enough - crossing all political and ideological borders.

There is absolutely no reason to be dependent upon petroleum gasoline and diesel as our primary engine fuels, and there is very little reason to rely on petroleum oil for any of the other products made from oil. Ethanol can replace all petroleum oil uses; not just for fuels, but everything made from oil. No American military service men or women have died defending the production and distribution of ethanol fuel. To my knowledge the same can be said about all military personnel serving Canada, Great Britain, France, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and all the Scandinavian countries.

Where does clean, safe, ethanol fuel come from? In America and the world, it starts with our farmers; the very same farmers who are responsible for much of the food we eat every single day. In an ill-considered move to placate the oil industry, the EPA has turned to giving out exemptions to so-called small oil refineries. The EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, those un-elected deep state bureaucrats with their own agenda to push battery electric vehicles.* These exemptions blunt the efforts of farmers to produce the ethanol that they were asked to produce to overcome societal and environmental nightmares. These exemptions...these rewards...are given at the expense and detriment to our farmers. The exemptions are insane and the EPA's efforts are destroying our environment, not protecting it. (* The EPA’s favorite money burner Tesla just announced U.S. sales plunged $2 billion dollars!)

Yesterday, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce heard testimony of how these exemptions have hurt our farming community. Kelly Nieuwenhuis, a farmer from Iowa and President of the Siouxland Energy Cooperative, talked about how he was forced to idle his plant and furlough his employees because of the EPA's rampant refinery exemptions.

Kelly Nieuwenhuis testifies before Congress

This is one of the toughest things I have ever had to do." Kelly Nieuwenhuis of Siouxland Energy Cooperative on being forced to idle his plant and furlough his employees because of the EPA's rampant refinery exemptions.

Posted by Growth Energy on Tuesday, October 29, 2019

This American industry, and these American workers should not be put out of jobs producing cleaner, safer fuel. America and the world is well past the time when all the negative myths about ethanol have been proven false. The Auto Channel and others have countered every lie invented by the oil industry to malign ethanol and protect the poison fuels produced from petroleum oil. There isn't one valid reason to hand out these exemptions. There isn't one valid reason not to extend ethanol use. We should be far past arguing about using E10 or E15; we should be using a minimum of E30 for all vehicles currently on the road or water, and require that all new engines be certifiably built to run on E85 and higher ethanol fuels.