I’ll take a couple of 5-gal buckets at $30 per…
Seriously, IDK why we have no E-0 at any pumps here. I’m not the only one paying $100 for 5 gallons at the powersports dealers.
E15 replacing E10?
- Thread starter CarbonToast
- Start date
Seriously, IDK why we have no E-0 at any pumps here. I’m not the only one paying $100 for 5 gallons at the powersports dealers.
I defer to you, as you have more details. Not sure who is to blame for the fuel situation. The facts that I have are that corn is not the best thing to start with to create ethanol, and I cannot get any E-0 for my OPE and Summer use vehicles. Daily driver runs fine on E-10, I would really like to have an ethanol free gas at a fair price, but for some reason, I have to buy boutique fuel at an excessive price.
Recent increases in how much ethanol is being hocked is 100% due to supply issues as far as I’m aware. It might be marketed to give farmers a warm fuzzy but it’s 100% due to regional shortages and I’m uncertain it’s even sustainable.
Not sure how long it will take refineries to retool for the new paradigm of light sweet being overly abundant but they’ve had 25 years and haven’t bit, hopefully we don’t need to haul the sour stuff over road to the Midwest because we are getting bypassed by newly completed export pipelines.
I am not sure what your telling me, but it sounds like your telling me the current push for ethanol is a shortage of crude. While that might be true in the Midwest, its definitely not true here. Were connected by pipe to Houston, which are tooled for light sweet. We also have port storage and can ship in refined product. But were still forced to use it?
Additionally heavy crude is better at making diesel than gasoline, so pushing ethanol gas is a bit counter-intuitive. I would think the bigger shortage would be diesel?
They don't want to retool your refineries because its expensive and takes a long time, and up till recently they had a reliable supply. Refining has long been an issue in the USA, and we haven't built a new one in decades.
I am pretty sure we here in the Southeast would be happy for you to keep our share of the ethanol. We don't need it or want it, and the refiners make less money on it so I am sure they would be happy also.
Your misconception is that having lots of crude we can’t refine means lots of gasoline.
Midwest and central regions aren’t getting sour which is imported, even in Texas they need to import sour which is in short supply due to a long term drought in Panama (water levels are too low for many large ship crossings due to how slowly the canal refills when they are below minimum water levels at the lake). I don’t follow Texas ethanol use but if I had to guess, anywhere with a shortage of sour is likely getting more ethanol because of the shortage of sour crude.
As I said crude crude everywhere but nothing we are able to refine.
California and the west have enough sour from overseas, I don’t follow the East but it’s possible they have the same issue because Texas is unable to import enough sour from Atlantic side producers and pacific sided oil is deprioritized in the canal.
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I understand the issues with the Panama Canal, however that is not historically how oil came from the middle east to the Eastern US - it came through the strait of Hormuz and across. Since the Huti / red sea thing I thought they were going around the cap of good hope and across. More expensive and time consuming for sure. But doesn't explain shortage?
So I am sorry. I understand that the issue in the Midwest has to do with lack of crude. But that doesn't explain the ethanol push outside that area? Possibly they regulators are just behind?
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What is the obstacle to building refineries that can use the “sweet” crude? Or a facility that can do both?
They can use both but if you have excessive sweet the cost goes up a lot and efficiency goes down.
Thats why for decades nearly all our domestic crude was exported in trade for heavy/sour. Immense investment was made many decades ago to deal with heavy sour as efficiently as possible and nearly all antique rigs for sweet were either decommissioned or upfitted for heavy or asphalt generation.
The small refineries that were designed specifically for light sweet like the 2 daralect rigs in northern Wisconsin have been mostly shut down.
I still maintain Wisconsins small antique refinery up north should have never been shut down but I’m not king of the country, everybody claimed it was too expensive to produce rug using light sweet, I bet that it hasn’t been more $$$ for a decade+ now that we can’t get rid of the stuff.
Texas was getting a lot of sour from Mexico a while ago which is shut off.
The Middle East isn’t exporting to the US at normal levels, nor are central/South American entities, far as I’m aware we have been pretty acutely short of sour crude nationally on and off since 2023, why the west is no longer short I can’t answer, my guess is it’s a complex situation where limited resources go to the highest bidder?
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I know this is a naive observation, something so important as the oil industry ( including gas, diesel, asphalt, etc, etc), you think would be run much more efficiently, especially in a capitalist economy. Makes no sense to me to pump out oil and sell it only to buy it back in a different form from other countries. I’m sure it’s way more complicated than I think, but on the surface, it makes very little sense.
The idea that there is not sour crude available to midwest since one pipeline opened up that sour crude to other markets is not how the markets are playing out.
There are issues for the gulf coast since they historically look to Mexico and Venezuela for that type of crude oil.
Refiners in the midwest typically have used canadian sour crude since there is an established pipline supply with a reliable trade partner and that crude historically trades at a lower price. That allows the refiners to make a higher profit on the spread between crude and refined products, as well as the reality that the sour crude makes more products...
There are issues for the gulf coast since they historically look to Mexico and Venezuela for that type of crude oil.
Refiners in the midwest typically have used canadian sour crude since there is an established pipline supply with a reliable trade partner and that crude historically trades at a lower price. That allows the refiners to make a higher profit on the spread between crude and refined products, as well as the reality that the sour crude makes more products...
You aren’t alone, since the 1980’s our light sweet gets sold for big money in trade for sour. Just always been that way my whole life.
From what I understand there is an element of subsidization of freight responsible for the “dumb system “ we have in place
our massive tank farm is running below normal levels to the point of being cranky, must be a reason .
EIA stats show that Canadian Crude imports are actually at or ahead on a weekly basis compared to 5 year averages. Not granular enough for one specific tank farm, but certainly shows that there has not been a reduction in the volume of Canadian crude coming this direction. Speculation at the time was that the new outlet for crude would simply result in an increase and production and here we are...
Allowing back-to-back waivers for the sale of E15 has been going on for quite some time. This recent article from the EPA's website goes into more detail. EPA Allows for Nationwide Year-Round E15. This EPA Fuel Waivers webpage shows the back-to-back waivers given since each has a maximum number of 20 days allowed under the Clean Air Act.
I read somewhere that there was no requirement last year to show the fuel had changed from E10 to E15. Just keep using the E10 stickers.
I read somewhere that there was no requirement last year to show the fuel had changed from E10 to E15. Just keep using the E10 stickers.
