US Navy Buying biofuel for $16 a gallon

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This is going to help the Defense Department weather looming budget cuts, for sure. Teaming up with the Department of Agriculture (which has a cheery Rotary Club ring to it), the Navy has purchased 450,000 gallons of biofuel for about $16 a gallon, or about 4 times the price of its standard marine fuel, JP-5, which has been going for under $4 a gallon.

You won’t be surprised to learn that a member of Obama’s presidential transition team, T. J. Glauthier, is a “strategic advisor” at Solazyme, the California company that is selling a portion of the biofuel to the Navy. Glauthier worked – shock, shock – on the energy-sector portion of the 2009 stimulus bill.

http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/20 ... -a-gallon/

That calculates as wasting: $5,400,000

The Navy sale isn’t Solazyme’s first trip to the public trough, of course. The company got a $21.8 million grant from the 2009 stimulus package.

Solazyme’s partner in the biofuel sale is Dynamic Fuels, a Louisiana company owned jointly by Tyson Foods and Tulsa-based Syntroleum. Tyson and Syntroleum are distinguished by having profitable lines of business that do not rely on government grants to unprofitable “green” projects. This does not make their biofuel product price-competitive with fossil fuels, however. (They were induced to develop biofuel manufacturing processes by a combination of subsidies and tax breaks.)

The Dynamic Fuels plant was opened for business in Geismar, LA in 2010, becoming by far the largest biofuels plant in North America – and reportedly, in combination with a plant in Finland, a producer of 94% of the world’s biofuels. This is great boosterism stuff, but the biofuels produced by Dynamic Fuels are still considerably more expensive than the fossil-fuel alternative. Dynamic Fuels has begun supplying aviation biofuel to KLM, the Dutch flag carrier, but of course, the use of more-expensive biofuels by commercial carriers has to be subsidized by governments.

http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/20 ... -a-gallon/


Our tax dollars at work...

So what is Obama's cut from this deal?

Republicans want gas to cost $3.50 a gallon.

Great for the navy.

It is merely a million dollar expense. Deficit is on the trillions, so the extra expense is really meaningless. Btu then the navy is actually going to be green. Plus it makes a lot of sense for the navy to be able to operate without oil.

Inuyasha always posts such great news!

Yeah, who cares if this biofuel is totally unsustainable? At least it's "climate neutral" ... Well, alright, except for all that stuff we did to make it that wasn't. But we just won't talk about that, okay?

Last edited by dmm1010 on 11 Dec 2011, 12:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

Where is it $3.50? I went to the cheapest place within a half hour drive of where I live (I was already out that way) and I paid more than that! If the republicans want to stabilize gas prices at $3.50, I'm sold!

In 1990 regular gasoline cost around one dollar (USD $1.00) per gallon, and people would have been livid if you even hinted about increasing that price by 350 percent. In 2011 you mention three dollars and 50 cents (USD $3.50) per gallon as if it were a bargain. Times sure do change.

Anyway, liberals want gas to cost one hundred dollars (USD $100.00) per gallon. Then we can all sit around in the cold, damp, and dark and sing Kumbayah. Mother Earth won't be happy any other way.

It's far from ideal but it would help create some predictability in the business world that the markets could bank on a little. If we ca get the current administration out of office, we have enough petroleum reserves that we could drive prices down worldwide and even put a little tax towards alternative energy research (for products that are cost effective enough to market without subsidy) and still keep prices down.

Oh, I agree with you. My comment was directed at androbot2084, whose message I understood as a jab at Republicans for allegedly wanting gas to cost about $4.00 instead of an "environmentally correct" $16.00 (i.e., the price of the biofuel mentioned in the OP) or more per gallon. It's possible my comprehension has failed me again, but I've heard these sorts of remarks from liberals before.

Last edited by dmm1010 on 11 Dec 2011, 3:14 am, edited 2 times in total.

$5 mil is a irrelevant amount of money especially when you're talking military spending. We spend many times that amount of day in Iraq and Afghanistan.

How do think we ended up with a $15,000,000,000,000 deficit? We didn't ask for the war on terror, but there are lots of ways to cut costs.

It seems it isn't, seeing how it is used successfully by the navy themselves.