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Landon Hall

The flex-fuel Dodge Charger shows you can be both green and cool

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Aaron Walsh’s first car was a 2008 Chrysler Sebring flex-fuel, meaning it could take E85 or any other ethanol blend. It was a good car.

But his new car … wow. The 2012 Dodge Charger, in Tungsten Metallic gray. Now that’s a proper car for a young man. And Walsh never would have bought it if it didn’t come in a flex-fuel version.

“That’s my biggest reason for using it,” says the student from Haslett, Mich., just east of Lansing. “I absolutely hate the petroleum industry.”

His reasons are mostly environmental: the BP spill in the Gulf, etc. “I could go into it, but it would take a long time.”

The point is, he did something about it, and that something came around the time he decided he needed a vehicle upgrade. Walsh already knew the benefits of ethanol because of his father, who works for the state of Michigan, which encourages state employees to put E85 into their flex-fuel vehicles. So right around his 21st birthday, last June, he found the Charger and its 3.6-liter Pentastar V6 engine.

“I wanted something that didn’t have to run on gasoline,” he said. “And the first thing I wanted was an electric; I was really into the Chevy Volt. But then I realized a college student doesn’t have $40,000. Then I looked and saw that the Charger is $24,000.”

Walsh, who attends Lansing Community College, says finding an E85 station isn’t difficult. “It keeps getting easier and easier,” he says. He posts his fill-up data to his Twitter feed, @gasisoutrageous (his account name is #Number1BigHero6Fan … hey, dude has other interests besides ethanol), and he regularly gets in the twenties for mpg. Also, E85 is a lot cheaper than regular gasoline at many stations in the Lansing-Haslett area. Nationally, E85 was only $1.86 a gallon Thursday, 23.7 percent cheaper than E10, according to E85Prices.com.

Price isn’t the only benefit to buying E85. Higher ethanol blends burn more cleanly and efficiently than E10 (what most of us call regular gas). Using more alcohol fuels displaces oil, strengthening the overall U.S. economy, creating domestic jobs; reducing oil consumption is better for our air, water and health.

But the price at the pump is still a big factor, and most Americans know this. Walsh knows it, and needs it. He works at a convenience store, and says his dad has been helping him out covering the cost of payments and upkeep. The vehicle is also not exactly ideal for the brutal Michigan winters, with is rear-wheel and slick tires.

But he loves it. Using ethanol doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy your car at the same time. And that roaring engine runs great on high-octane E85.

“When I started driving, whenever I would slam on the accelerator pedal, I’d just hear dollar signs. Now I like the performance. I actually bought that car just because of the engine.”

Other posts in our “Share Your Story” series:

Fuel Freedom Staff

Layoffs piling up as American oil drillers pull back

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Communities around the country that drove the surge in U.S. oil production are becoming victims of falling global prices. Already this month, oil-and-gas servicing companies Baker Hughes and Schlumberger announced a combined 16,000 layoffs, owing to the steep drop in oil prices.

“They gave me 24 hours to leave my house,” John Roberts, a van driver for Schlumberger who was let go in Williston, N.D., told CNN Money.

In North Dakota, where work on the Bakken shale-oil formation had attracted thousands of workers amid an economic surge, Jim Arthaud, CEO of MBI Energy Services in Belfield, said up to 20,000 jobs could be lost in that area alone, and just among companies that service oil and gas drillers.

Prof. Bill Gilmer of the University of Houston told Forbes that 75,000 jobs could be lost in Houston alone in 2015. The city has added about 100,000 jobs a year since 2011.

The antidote to this boom-and-bust cycle of volatile oil prices is to provide a steady, dependable supply of cheap transportation fuel to American drivers for the long term. Increasing the use of alternative fuels will reduce our dependence on oil and protect the economy from the oil-market rollercoaster.

The United States has helped bring down the global price of oil by producing more oil – a lot more – here at home. But that oil, extracted from shale rock, mostly in North Dakota and Texas, is expensive to get out of the ground. As the global price of oil has plummeted, so too have the oil companies’ profit margins, and they’re starting to lay off workers on a mass scale.

To promote the use of more alternative fuels, as a counterweight to oil-price volatility, the U.S. should build up its infrastructure for producing and distributing fuels like ethanol and methanol. There are thousands of jobs that could potentially be created. In 2013, for instance, the U.S. produced 13.3 billion gallons of ethanol, which is blended into the gasoline we all use. The ethanol industry supported 86,504 direct jobs and 300,277 indirect jobs, according to the Renewable Fuels Association‘s most recent data. Those are domestic jobs that support American families, and which can’t be outsourced.

The sector added $44 billion to the nation’s gross domestic product and paid $8.3 billion in taxes, without government subsidies.

If we made such alternative fuels more widely available, we could not only reduce our dependence on oil, we’d create a whole new generation of U.S. jobs that would keep investment in the country and strengthen the overall economy.

Fuel Freedom Staff

BP will cut jobs, take $1 billion in charges amid oil slump

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The plunging price of oil has taken its toll on one of the world’s largest oil companies: Britain’s BP announced Wednesday it would cuts some of its 84,000-member worldwide workforce, as well as take $1 billion in charges over the next five quarters.

The New York Times reports that most of the financial hit will come in the form of severance pay, indicating that the number of job cuts could be significant. The company didn’t say how many positions it intended to shed.

The price of Brent crude has fallen some 40 percent since June. The price per barrel dropped another 1.5 percent Wednesday, to $65.32.

Bloomberg reports that BP’s move is the latest to come amid the price squeeze:

Europe’s third-biggest oil company by market value joins larger rivals Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Total SA in restricting budgets and offloading operations as margins are squeezed by the 40 percent drop in prices since June. BP said in October that about $1 billion to $2 billion may be cut from the $24 billion to $26 billion of planned capital expenditure in 2015.

Fuel Freedom Staff

Brazil prepares indictments in bribery scandal involving oil giant

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Brazil’s state-controlled oil company, Petrobras, is embroiled in what might become one of the largest corruption scandals in the nation’s history.

This week The New York Times reported that prosecutor general Rodrigo Janot had prepared indictments on at least 11 executives from Brazil’s largest construction companies.

According to the story, Janot:

is opening the way for a trial that would focus scrutiny on growing testimony about a web of illicit dealings between former executives at Petrobras, the state-controlled oil company, powerful contractors and political figures in Ms. Rousseff’s government.

“We are following the money and we will reach all of these perpetrators,” Mr. Janot said Saturday night in an interview with the Globo television network.

The scandal, which involves claims of bribes to obtain contracts with Petrobras, stunned Brazil’s business establishment in November, when police arrested the executives and transferred them to a jail in the southern city of Curitiba. If testimony already obtained in the case is proven true, the case would dwarf previous corruption scandals in Brazil.

Evidence points to vast sums of money changing hands:

Pedro Barusco, once an obscure, third-tier executive at Petrobras, has agreed to return about $100 million in bribes related to his time at the company, a disclosure that could rank him among the largest known bribery recipients in Brazil’s history. Separately, Augusto Mendonça, an executive at Toyo Setal, a shipbuilding company, testified last week that he paid more than $23 million in bribes directly to the governing Workers Party and to Petrobras executives in exchange for contracts to build oil tankers.

The scandal already affecting the popularity of President Dilma Rousseff, who was narrowly re-elected in May. Rousseff is a former energy minister who once served as chairwoman of the board at Petrobras.

A new opinion survey released on Sunday by Datafolha, a prominent Brazilian polling company, showed that 68 percent of Brazilians hold Ms. Rousseff responsible for the bribery scandal. At the same time, Ms. Rousseff, who narrowly won re-election in October, has an approval rating of 42 percent, the survey showed.

Arctic Leaf

Building the Natural Gas Highway: The Journey of Thousands of Miles Begins in Newport Beach

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California still is seen as the state that exports innovation, despite the fact that it has seen some tough economic times of late. In this context, I was pleased to see the recognition granted by the Orange County Register (Nov 6) to the Clean Energy Fuel Corporation, and its efforts to build the Natural Gas Highway. I was even more surprised to find out that the corporate offices were located near my own office. Clearly, the popularity of natural gas and its derivatives, ethanol and methanol, are on the uptake since the President’s State of the Union address indicating the nation’s economy and environment  would benefit if it weaned itself off oil and by implication gasoline. Even before Obama’s speech, there was a growing recognition among many Americans– including environmental and business leaders– that natural gas could become the core of a strategy aimed at reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) and other pollutants, lowering the costs of vehicular fuel, and reducing dependency on oil imports, thus providing funds for investment in the U.S. Clean Energy Fuels Corporation, located in Newport Beach, is making it easier for consumers to access natural gas for their vehicles. According to the story in the Register, it has invested more than $300 million in the last two years on natural gas fuel stations across the nation. Most of the more than 400 stations that they have developed and  offer only compressed natural gas (CNG), a fuel that works better for comparatively short trips ( e.g. buses, taxis, garbage trucks, short hall trucks, local consumers ). Current and future placement of stations will increasingly offer liquid natural gas (LNG). LNG works better than CNG for long distance trips. Are the leaders of the Clean Energy Fuel Corporation nuts?  Maybe they are…but I don’t believe so.  While, the Corporation has yet to turn a profit (apparently after 15 or 16 years), since going public in 2007, their market value is now more than 1 billion dollars. Their phones are ringing. Large retailing companies relying on trucks, long distance trucking companies, bus manufacturers, taxis and bus companies seem to be gravitating toward use of cheaper natural gas as a fuel. But these users and potential users need assurances that natural gas fuel stations will be reasonably accessible. Clean Energy Fuel aims to provide such assurances. Many respected financial analysts believe that the Clean Energy Fuel Corporation is on the cusp of and will benefit financially from the increased acceptance and growth of alternative transportation fuels, particularly natural gas. Assuming both the sizable price gap between oil and natural gas remains and the corresponding price gap between natural gas fuel and gasoline as well as between natural gas and diesel fuel stays relatively large; Clean Energy Fuel Corporation’s future looks bright. Yes, it will have rivals. Shell Oil, according to the Register article, apparently is going to start selling LNG at existing truck stops. Soundings that I have picked up from natural gas leaders, CEOS of businesses dependent on trucking and diverse investors suggest an evolving interest in developing both CNG and LNG fuel stations and the Natural Gas Highway. In this context, 22 states, under the bipartisan leadership of Governor John Hickenlooper (D) of Colorado and Governor Mary Fallin (R) of Oklahoma, have initiated a collaborative project to buy CNG outfitted cars from Detroit to replace old state vehicles, when their time passes. Detroit in turn has promised to develop a less expensive CNG vehicle for the participating states which could ultimately benefit consumers. Given recent projections of the market for natural gas fuel by government and reputable private and nonprofit groups and increased advocacy for alternative fuels by a coalition of environmental, nonprofit and business groups, I wouldn’t bet against Clean Energy Fuel’s future health. My hope, however, is that it and, indeed, its competitors add room for natural gas derivatives such as ethanol and methanol in their planned natural gas stations.  Apart from generating use by owners of flex fuel cars now in existence, their agreement to do so would encourage (the relatively inexpensive and easy) conversion of existing vehicles to flex fuel vehicles. Significantly, EPA has certified the use of E10 in all vehicles, E15 in vehicles after 2001 and E85 in approved flex fuel vehicles. Hopefully, EPA will soon certify methanol as well as approve an expanded list of conversion kits for existing older vehicles. These approvals are possible, if not probable, given the environmental, economic and consumer benefits of alternative fuels and the evolving politics of fuel. Allowing oil companies to sustain the very restrictive rules now governing the vehicular fuel market will continue to prop up America’s dependency on imported oil as well as support relatively high fuel costs and increased environmental degradation.   President and CEO Andrew Littlefair of Clean Energy Fuel indicated, “With cheaper, abundant fuel, a network of stations, [and] redesigned engines …the time for natural gas transportation has arrived.” I would add, the time for natural gas based ethanol and methanol has also arrived. I commend Clean Energy Fuel for its initiative in developing the Natural Gas Highway. The Company, borrowing from President John Kennedy, has begun an important journey of thousands of miles in Newport Beach. Contrary to (and paraphrasing) the poet Robert Frost, hopefully the road they are building will be very well travelled.  Maybe a couple of leisurely  lunches near the ocean in beautiful Newport Beach could convince my colleagues at Clean Energy Fuel  to consider working with producers of natural gas based ethanol and methanol as well as interested states and localities to  extend  the Natural Gas Highway to ethanol and methanol. It would be good for traffic and their bottom line, good for development of related commercial activities and, most important, good for America