Exclusive Interview With RFA CEO/President Bob Dinneen at RFA Annual Membership Meeting in Des Moines, IA

by Jerry Perkins (BioFuels Journal) ... RFA President and CEO Bob Dinneen outlined the issues facing the Washington, DC-based ethanol advocacy organization which has 172 members, including 50 producer members, 79 associate members, 31 supporting members, and 12 members of the allied Advanced Ethanol Council.
The state of the ethanol industry is good, Dinneen said, although political uncertainty and the potential for future growth of the industry has been stifled by the proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to lower the 2014 Renewable Fuel Standard Renewable Volume Obligation (RVO) for ethanol.
...
Increasing the availability of higher blends of ethanol, such as E15 and E85, needs to be addressed in the marketplace, he stated, by adding more dispensers for the higher blends at retail gasoline outlets.
...
Exports of ethanol also need to be promoted. “If the ethanol industry is going to grow, the ethanol export market needs to grow,” Dinneen noted.
...
Dinneen said U.S. ethanol exports have been hurt by illegal and unwarranted anti-dumping restrictions imposed on U.S. ethanol by the European Union (EU).
...
In the United States, the ethanol industry faces rail transportation problems because of the congestion on U.S. rail lines caused by a large increase in shipments of crude oil from the Bakken shale oil fields in North Dakota, Montana, and southern Canada.
Railroads are favoring crude oil shipments over ethanol, Dinneen said, which is hurting the ability of ethanol plants to ship ethanol to their customers.
...
Dinneen said it is important that improvements be made in rail infrastructure and maintenance to prevent derailments.
Unless rail regulators focus on preventing derailments, requiring new or retrofitted tank cars will take years to fix and cost billions of dollars and won’t solve the root cause of the problem, which is keeping railcars on the tracks. READ MORE