Ethanol Blend Wall Still There

domesticfuel.com
Posted by Cindy Zimmerman – May 8th, 2012

The ethanol blend wall is still a reality for the industry, according to the chief economist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“For the time being, I think we are at a blend wall and it’s a pretty hard wall,” said USDA’s Joe Glauber during a recent gathering of farm broadcasters in Washington DC. Glauber says the general feeling now is that the blend wall is about 13.5 billion gallons. “What gets produced in excess of that has to go out through the export market,” he said. “Last year we had a spectacular year, exporting more than a billion gallons, but most people think that won’t happen this year.” He expects Brazil in particular will not import as much ethanol this year.

While the industry is moving steadily toward the 15 billion gallon corn ethanol cap under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2), Glauber says right now the market is steady at about 10 percent of ethanol blended fuel and getting E15 in the marketplace is moving slowly toward reality. “But you still have the underlying economics of whether or not a gas station is going to change over equipment to be able to sell E15,” he said. “The likely thing would be so-called blender pumps, which are expensive propositions.”

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