U.S. exports increased in 2014 — report
Source: Amanda Peterka, E&E reporter • Posted: Friday, February 6, 2015
Canada, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, the Philippines and India were the top five recipients of U.S. ethanol.
In all, U.S. ethanol was exported to 51 countries, “including regions that once seemed far-fetched as renewable fuel destinations such as the Middle East and North Africa,” RFA President and CEO Bob Dinneen said in a statement.
The trade group credited aggressive actions to sell U.S. fuel abroad for the increase in ethanol exports; RFA participated in trade missions to Panama, China, Peru, Japan and South Korea in 2014. The increase in exports also came during a year U.S. EPA failed to set annual requirements for refiners to blend biofuels into petroleum fuel in the United States.
Last year’s exports still fall short of the record set in 2011, when U.S. producers sent 1.193 billion gallons of ethanol to foreign countries.
Since then, the European Union imposed an anti-dumping duty on imports of ethanol from the United States in response to allegations that U.S. producers were dumping their product in Europe. In 2011, U.S. producers exported 296 million gallons to the European Union; in 2014, exports to Europe were just 49 million gallons.
U.S. exports last year greatly outweighed imports from other countries, according to the RFA report. The United States imported just 84 million gallons last year, compared with 400 million gallons in 2013.
Of the total imports, 60.8 million gallons came from Brazil last year in the form of sugar cane ethanol. In contrast, Brazil exported 348.2 million gallons to the United States in 2013.