Big Oil and ethanol
Big Oil in the United States is fighting on several fronts to delay or stop, if possible, the adoption of ethanol as a widely used fuel for automobiles. That's not the opinion of anti-globalists or green radicals, but one expressed in an article in the BusinessWeek, hardly a hotbed of anti-business conspiracy theories.
The article ("Big Oil's Big Stall On Ethanol ", 10/1/07) shows how the oil industry, separately and through their industry front, the American Petroleum Institute, have fought the attempt b Congress to increase the use of so-called E85, fuel that is 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. That's in spite of the fact that the industry is now receiving billions in subsidies (51 cents per gallon!) for selling some E10, fuel that is 10% ethanol and 90% gasoline. Another subsidy for the rich.
"[Big oil] working against the E85 blend with tactics both overt and stealthy. Efforts range from funding studies that bash the spread of ethanol for driving up the price of corn, and therefore some food, to not supporting E85 pumps at gas stations. The tactics infuriate a growing chorus of critics, from the usual suspects-pro-ethanol consumer groups-to the unexpected: the oil industry's oft-time ally, the auto industry." The auto industry, the article points out, has manufactured over five million "flex-fuel" vehicles that can use E85.
The key way they discourage ethanol is by punishing gas stations that carry the E85 blend. As the article notes, "Of the 179,000 pumps at U.S. gas stations, only about 1,000 pump E85. Almost none are at oil-company-owned stations."
While the article doesn't mention it, the big fear from the oil companies lie sin the most important part of their business, the refineries. Through the refineries they can throttle gasoline production. And while oil refining is a complex business that has an enormous barrier to entry (the recent news of a new refinery being planned was a major aberration), ethanol is easy to produce at low investment (for example, backwoods distilleries).
Now there are some arguments about the ultimate expense of corn to produce ethanol versus that of gasoline. But the rising price of oil, and even more, the costs of energy dependence, the danger of subsidizing regimens like those in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria, overseas military expenditures, along with environmental impact, rarely gets factored into the cost of oil.
Clearly Big Oil is afraid of losing its oligopoly power. As one pro-ethanol advocate is quoted as saying in the article, Big Oil "perceives the growth of biofuels as an independent, competitive threat to its market power in refining and gasoline marketing."
9:29:41 PM 
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