Ethanol Future Remains Cloudy After EPA Delay

摘要

Both backers of the ethanol industry and its opponents saw positive signs in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) announcement on December 1, 2009, that it will likely decide whether to allow 15% ethanol by the summer of 2010. And the corn futures market reacted with a yawn. "[The recent] announcement prompted kind of a flat attitude," said Jerry Gidel of North America Risk Management Services in Chicago. "It was a modest reaction at best." EPA's announcement that it will monitor further testing of E15 before making a decision on a petition from Growth Energy to boost ethanol blends in gasoline did not boost corn futures. "From the standpoint of what is being projected by USDA, I don't know that it changes the projection of 4.2 billionbushels," said Gidel, who tracks the ethanol industry's use of corn. "That USDA projection for the current marketing year might have been on the low side if EPA had approved a temporary boost to 12% ethanol blends," he said. Some analysts expected the ethanol industry to use up to 4.5 billion bushels of corn if that had happened.