When, four days later, Bloomberg News broke the story that an executive order was imminent, corn and gasoline prices went berserk.
Although several pilot projects are up and running — with many more in the pipeline — commercial production has remained elusive, with the costs remaining much higher than for producing ethanol from corn, or gasoline.
And on October 31st VeraSun Energy, one of America's biggest ethanol producers, caught out by gyrations in the prices of corn and petrol (gasoline), filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Midwesterners are eager to promote the use of a corn-based gasoline additive; Californians and New Yorkers are not.
Ambitious politicians seem incapable of setting foot in the state without genuflecting before the altar of ethanol, a corn-based gasoline additive.
There are also details to be worked out covering the corn-based gasoline additive ethanol, which is critical to wining political support for the bill from farm-state lawmakers.
Although the House adopted its energy measure in April, the Senate has been moving slowly, devoting much of last week to a fight over increasing the use of a corn-based gasoline additive.
Under direct prodding from Vice President Dick Cheney, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, and Representative Bill Thomas, Republican of California, settled their differences over tax breaks for ethanol, a corn-based gasoline additive, which is crucial to building political support for the overall measure in the House and Senate.
He was railing against an idea Congress itself came up with, in 2007, but which has not worked out as planned: a requirement that refiners blend a certain amount of cellulosic ethanol (made from non-edible feedstock such as wood or grass, rather than corn) into the gasoline (petrol) they sell, or face a fine.
Cellulosic biofuels still cost much more to produce than either corn ethanol or gasoline.
