Yes, it’s true… the United States smashed another fuel production record this year. According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA), the country produced over one million barrels per day of this liquid gold in the first six months of 2017. Unfortunately, this isn’t something to brag about. It would be wise just to keep this lil record to ourselves, rather than broadcast it loudly across the energy news wires and Mainstream media.
Why do I say that? Because the U.S. produced a record 1.02 million barrels per day of corn-based ethanol, the lowest quality fuel in the world. Corn ethanol’s EROI – Energy Returned On Invested is so low, it barely provides one full barrel of fuel for one barrel worth of energy that it took to produce it. I get into that in a moment, but let’s look at U.S. ethanol production since 2010:
U.S. ethanol fuel production was 870,000 barrels per day (bd) in 2010, fell to 852,000 bd in 2013 and then continued to increase to a new record of 1.02 million bd in the first six months of 2017. We must remember, corn ethanol is blended into gasoline which is called “E10.” All E10 means is that gasoline you buy at the pump can be blended up to 10% with ethanol.
Americans consumed the majority of domestically produced corn ethanol as was blended into the 9.3 million bd of motor gasoline we burned in 2016 (EIA). Actually, it works out quite nicely as 10% of 9.3 million bd or motor gasoline equals 930,000 bd of ethanol. According to the EIA, the U.S. exported 68,000 bd of ethanol in 2016… which is very close to the total 990,000 bd of U.S. ethanol production last year.
Okay, so we are producing one hell of a lot of corn juice to power our vehicles… what does that really mean? It means that we are consuming approximately 40% of our domestic corn crop to produce 10% of our motor gasoline supply. In the article, Trump’s Support For Ethanol Is Bad For Taxpayers & Their Cars:
