Rising fuel prices spur biofuels

[Cybergal]

Rising fuel prices spur biofuels
5/5/08

STARKVILLE, Miss. — The ominous drumbeat of rising energy prices is becoming more like a clarion for more forms of energy, opening up increases in biofuels, a trend not expected to diminish, say forest industry insiders.


"It looks like we are on the brink of a threefold increase in biofuels, just in the next decade," said Jim Bowyer, president of Bowyer and Associates Inc., a wood science and bioenergy consulting firm.


Bowyer said the increases in the U.S. production would likely be even greater.


It's no secret that as developing countries become more industrialized and energy demands increase, the rising cost of petroleum will spur research and development of fuels less tied to a barrel of oil. Already, ethanol production in the U.S. is increasing by tens of thousands of barrels a day, said Bowyer.
More here .................. http://www.thetrucker.com/News/Stori...rbiofuels.aspx

[slowpoke1967]

opening up increases in biofuels.yes alot went from 1.00 a gallon to 1.65 a gallon but there is alot of used cooking oil turned into bio-fuel in the states for sell. but o/o's want to sit around and cry about how much fuel cost but dont really want to look in to running wvo.

[slowpoke1967]

According to Mike Hebson, the manager of Asda's store in Swansea, south Wales, there was no reason to be suspicious that sales of the company's cheapest bottles of cooking oil were running 20% higher than the previous year, way above any other store in Britain. "We just thought it was one of those things," says Hebson.
Why should he and his staff have been remotely questioning, he suggests, if men in overalls and lived-in denims had started buying Smart Price vegetable oil in batches of six, eight and 12 litres at a time. When one customer came in and filled a trolley to the brim with plastic containers of the thin, urine-coloured liquid, the checkout operator barely gave him a second glance.
"Naturally, we assumed they were buying on price," says Hebson, an Asda man to the soles of his own-brand brogues. There was another reason that his staff were unlikely to see anything untoward in bulk-buying cheap vegetable oil. "We just thought they were doing a lot of frying," he says. "You have to remember, healthy eating has not hit Swansea in a big way."
It wasn't until the Department of Transport began a series of trial tests in the city last March that staff realised something odd had been going on. In an attempt to take diesel vehicles belching out illegal emissions off the road, department inspectors introduced experimental spot checks on roads in Bristol, Westminster, Glasgow, Middlesbrough, Canterbury and Swansea. It was in the latter that they found something surprising: a car with a fuel tank half full of cooking oil.
"The funny thing was," says Hebson, "the driver told them he had been getting it from Asda Swansea for four or five months, because it was the cheapest around. When we read the report in the local paper we began to put two and two together."
The enterprising motorist was, so the reports suggested, running his diesel-engine motor on a mix of Asda cooking oil and standard fuel. At 42p a litre, the supermarket chain's oil is considerably cheaper than the 73p a litre that even a discounted retailer charges for diesel. The astonishing thing was it worked. Without any need to modify the engine, the motorist could run his car on the mix with no discernible difference in its performance. What's more, instead of diesel fumes, the engine gave off a rather pleasing odour - like frying time at the local chippy.
And if Asda's sales figures were anything to go by, unless he was running a fleet of buses across south Wales, the driver who had been pulled over by the emissions inspectors wasn't the only one. Wind your windows down in a Swansea traffic jam last spring, the rumour went, and the chances were you would think someone was having a barbecue

[freightmonitor]

fuel prices are suck right now. heard saudi arabia is going to be upping the oil production from 9 to 9.7 million barrels (or billion) a day.