E85Forum.com

IllinoisFlexFord · Joined: 17 Nov 2005 Posts: 1 Location: Crest Hill, IL

As of 17 November 2005 the Gas City Station at Interstate 55 and the Weber Road Exit in Romeoville, IL has E85 For $2.13 per gallon. This price is twenty cents below Gas City's price for regular unleaded. However, that price is equal to the regualr unleaded price across the street, and is actually above the regular unleaded price offered by stations within a coulple of miles of this location. Is this price gouging. Ask the owner of Gas City, Mr. Bill McEnery. The general office of this company is located in Frankfort, IL.
_________________
Tom in IL

GreenGasGuzzler · Joined: 22 Nov 2005 Posts: 1

Tom,

I noticed the same thing in Missouri so I sent a letter to the NEVC. After some delay I received the following response:

"The main reason your local station is not carrying E85, and is not sure
if it ever will, is simply due to the current price of ethanol. Ethanol
is selling today for $2.19/gallon, but gasoline is only $1.54/gallon. The
fear of the station is that they buy the product, and no one will buy it.
If and when ethanol does come back down, they will have to take a loss to get rid of the expensive E85 in order to replace it with cheaper E85.

The demand for ethanol has been at an all time high. Please look at
this link - http://www.ethanolrfa.org/pr050829.html You can see that even back in June we were using more ethanol than we were producing. This was leading to a problem even back in June. The phase out of MTBE in parts of the United States, which is due to the lack of MTBE liability protection in the recently signed Energy Bill and the outlawing in some state, has also increased demand. Another factor is that we have experienced a significant increase in voluntary blending. These are petroleum marketers that use ethanol to add octane or extend their fuel supplies. The hurricanes just compounded the situation. When gasoline supplies are tight, like what we experienced after Hurricane Rita & Katrina, marketers will use ethanol to extend their fuel supplies, as the combination of the two products requires no additional refining. The combination of all of these things has made ethanol much more expensive than gasoline right now.

It is hard to know where to point the finger of blame. The ethanol
plants are not receiving all of the profits, they do not own fuel stations -
the petroleum industry does. Ethanol is sent to a fuel terminal and then
blended with gasoline. It is up to the petroleum marketers to get it
to the consumer. The entity or individual that blends ethanol with gasoline is the one that receives the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC). This is a $.51/gallon federal income tax credit for every gallon of pure ethanol blended with gasoline. It is a common misconception that the ethanol producers receive this credit, when in all actuality, most of the time it is a petroleum marketer.

Many stations can work through their marketers or an ethanol plant to
enter into a contract to help stabilize their E85 prices, but most are not
interested. They are use to buying fuel at spot prices and want to do
the same with ethanol. The spot price of ethanol is normally a minimum of
$.30/gallon more expensive than contract price. Today, most of the
ethanol that was contracted earlier this year was priced below $1.50/gallon! As you can imagine, those stations that have the contracts have a very costeffective E85!

More ethanol plants are being built, and more ethanol will be available
for E85. The ethanol industry has been kept very small by Big Oil the last
25 years, and is now trying to catch up. In 2000, the industry had a
capacity of just two billion gallons, and will have more than five billion in
2006. Ethanol already saves the consumer $.30/gallon whether you use ethanol or not, and ethanol consists of more than 3% of the U.S. fuel supply today."

Robert White
Project Director
National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition
3118 Emerald Lane, Suite 100
Jefferson City, MO 65109
Phone: (573) 635-8445, Ext. 5
Fax: (573) 635-5466
www.e85fuel.com

Revision · Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 194 Location: Carol Stream, IL

Here are some interesting links that show Ethanol Pricing.

18 Month Price Graph
http://www.energy.ca.gov/gasoline/graphs/ethanol_18-month.html

10 year Price Graph
http://www.energy.ca.gov/gasoline/graphs/ethanol_10-year.html

Revision · Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 194 Location: Carol Stream, IL

If there were more stations offering E85. Then there would be some competition to keep the prices fair between the stations. Unless there were blocks in place to keep gas stations from offering E85.

See Chicago Tribune article.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-060127ethanol,1,719639.story?track=rss

Revision · Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 194 Location: Carol Stream, IL

http://www.suntimes.com/output/business/ford07.html

SunTime Article about Ford sponsoring more E85 pumps in Illinois.