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Defending Their Bottom Line
Posted 8 October 2013 in
When it became apparent that the oil industry has been doing everything in its power to block renewable fuel alternatives like E15 from coming to gas stations, a bipartisan team of Sens. Grassley (R-IA) and Klobuchar (D-MN) asked the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department to investigate these anti-competitive practices. While one might expect that the self-described champions of the free market at the Wall Street Journal would embrace this initiative, their editorial in this morning’s edition points to a more troubling trend: at every opportunity, the Wall Street Journal has defended the oil industry’s bottom line at the expense of cheaper, less carbon-intensive alternatives.
Most tellingly, the Journal’s editorial relies on one of Big Oil’s favorite talking points, the so-called “blend wall”:
Refiners are thus crashing against the 10% “blend wall”; beyond that concentration in gasoline, ethanol begins to damage motors.
The truth? Gasoline containing 15% ethanol is safe for all cars model year 2001 or later. What’s more, the Department of Energy put E15 through 6.5 million miles of trials, making it the most tested fuel in history, and the EPA has approved its sale in American gas stations. Here’s how the editorial concludes:
If ethanol is the miracle its supporters claim, it shouldn’t need a mandate or subsidies. And it shouldn’t need to bully the oil industry to do its selling for it.
It’s convenient that the Journal ignores the century of subsidies and special privileges afforded to the oil industry, advantages that have enabled it to cement its near-monopoly on our fuel supply to the detriment of our environment, our economy and our national debt. If the Wall Street Journal were truly committed to healthy, competitive markets, it would support the introduction of viable alternatives. There is a market for renewable fuels like E15 (as our recent polling indicates), but as long as the oil industry and its allies in the media continue to spread misinformation, American consumers will continue to lose out.
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