Ethanol documentary in Lincoln this week takes provocative look at oil industry
Source: By Russell Hubbard / World-Herald Bureau • Posted: Friday, November 14, 2014
- In one of the film’s more provocative segments, automotive engineer John Brackett demonstrates how cars can be converted to run on multiple fuels simply by changing the settings on the vehicle’s onboard computer or making other adjustments. “PUMP The Movie” was screened this week in Lincoln.
It is an industry that isn’t going away, and contrary to widely held views among the American public, one that is no longer subject to government subsidies or tax benefits, other than very small incentives for a minor and still emerging subset called cellulosic ethanol.
Fairness requires that ethanol’s critics be noted: The fuel is cheaper but does have a lower energy content, decreasing mileage. Many small-engine owners — boats, lawn mowers — say the alcohol-based fuel causes damage. Others cite environmental damage from expanding corn planting and fertilization; the manufactured foods lobby says diverting corn raises food prices.
“PUMP The Movie” takes on some of those criticisms head-on. But mostly, it challenges people to think about why there is only one widely used method of making engines go.
The movie was paid for by the Fuel Freedom Foundation, which calls itself a nonpartisan group based in Irvine, California. The producers have not said how much it cost to make. It has been showing since September and has been screened in Washington, Los Angeles, New York and elsewhere.
What follows are some of the major points made by “PUMP The Movie.” Some will anger ethanol critics, but, given the positions Nebraska and Iowa occupy in the renewable fuels industry, all are worth pondering:
>> Gasoline is a lot more expensive than you think.
According to the film, the U.S. government has spent $500 trillion to police the Persian Gulf area with military bases, deployments and combat actions — 10 times what the country has paid for the oil there. “It’s hard to imagine we ever would have been in Kuwait if they just grew broccoli there,” the film says.
>> Oil will become scarcer and more expensive as more people want what it provides.
Case in point: In 2001, Chinese consumers bought 1 million cars. In 2013, the total was 22 million. The film makes the case that oil supplies will dwindle and prices will rise as nations compete for petroleum.
And while domestic production, largely from previously untapped reserves in North Dakota and Montana, has made the United States a current world leader in oil, it will not be enough.
“We will die trying to provide enough with domestic production,” John Hoffmeister, former president of Shell Oil Co., says in the film.
>> Petroleum products have enjoyed a decadeslong monopoly on passenger motor fuels.
Early automobiles were designed to run on a variety of fuels, including alcohol-based ones. According to “PUMP,” oil baron John Rockefeller was behind the 1919 amendment to the U.S. Constitution that banned the manufacture and sale of distilled alcohols, not as a moral or temperance crusade, but as a means of killing competition for petroleum-based motor fuels.
Nowhere, the film says, is that monopoly better illustrated than at the gas pump, where most retail outlets are party to a captive supply agreement with an oil company.
“We are at a bit of a disadvantage,” conceded “PUMP” attendee Loran Schmit, the former Nebraska state senator who in 1971 introduced the legislation that created the Nebraska Ethanol Board. “We are dependent upon our competitors to market our product.”
The Renewable Fuels Standard, the product of recent-years environmental law, has caused billions of gallons of ethanol to be blended into the nation’s fuel supply. But it is still a drop in the bucket compared with the percentage of gasoline that goes into powering the country’s vehicles, “PUMP” said.
>> The way to break up a monopoly is with competition.
Competitors are all over the place, the film says, if people will consider the possibilities. There is ethanol, mostly made from corn. Methanol, or wood alcohol, almost caught on in California during the 1970s. The film predicts that electric cars will soon become ubiquitous as the price of their batteries falls.
It is a perfectly legitimate function of government, the film says, to weaken cartels through the stimulation of competition.
Low gas prices, which occur in cycles, distract people from the economic, energy independence and environmental advantages of biofuels, said Doug Durante, executive director of the Maryland-based Clean Fuels Development Coalition, who attended the Lincoln screening.
“Gasoline at $2.89 a gallon makes people figure they have other things to worry about,” Durante said. “Right now is a terrible time in that respect.”
>> There is nothing complicated about making cars that can run on biofuels — it is as simple as a line of computer code.
That’s right, says one of the film’s most provocative segments. It is not masses of speedily rotating and sensitive metal parts deep in the guts of your engine that prevent non-Flex Fuel vehicles from using concentrations higher than E10. It is merely within the computer code, a mere adjustment that can turn any post-1995 passenger car from gasoline-only to biofuel compliant.
“We can convert almost the entire U.S. fleet with only software updates,” says a gearhead interviewed in the film who actually hacks into vehicle computers and changes the code.
Note: It is illegal to change vehicle computer data and will void warranties.
>> Brazil did it.
The country’s president from 2003 to 2011, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was determined to make the nation energy independent — and it is. No worldwide conflict or embargo can shut down Brazil’s gas stations, which run on ethanol made from the nation’s vast sugar cane crops. Ethanol blends are by far the most common motor fuels, in blends of up to E100.
As for vehicle compatibility, all major global automakers operate factories to compete in the lucrative Brazilian car market.
“There is no difference between the cars they make there and the ones the same automakers make here,” said Todd Sneller, administrator of the Nebraska Ethanol Board. “I’ve been there and seen the plants.”
He said he is investigating another Nebraska screening of “PUMP The Movie,” and would like to bring it to Omaha, preferably in partnership with a community-based theater or nonprofit group.