High gas prices are made worse by Midwest floods
Recent flooding across the midwestern United States has devastated lives and industries and even wreaked havoc on gasoline prices across the nation. Gasoline prices have been steadily rising, as is typical of this time of year, but recently prices took aNEMAHA, NEBRASKA - MARCH 23: A corn field is filled with floodwater on March 23, 2019 near Nemaha, Nebraska. Damage estimates from flooding in Nebraska top $1 billion.
contain more than 10% ethanol. In the U.S., most ethanol is made from corn and is produced in the midwest. In Brazil, ethanol is made from sugar.in ethanol prices, because transportation lines were washed out and trains were unable to make deliveries. Some ethanol refineries were incapacitated, but most continued to produce ethanol but were unable to ship it out of the midwest.
Ethanol stocks are high right now, so ethanol isn't an immediate problem. However, much depends on the condition of the corn crops in the midwest. If corn yields are lower due to the flooding, then we should expect to see higher ethanol prices and, therefore, higher gasoline prices in the future. We may not feel the pinch this summer but we could feel it later in 2019 or even in 2020.
Perhaps it is time to rethink our ethanol policies in the United States and make sure that our corn supplies can rightly be utilized for food instead of as a gasoline additive. A small amount of ethanol is necessary to help oxygenate gasoline, but there is no good reason to putEllen R. Wald, Ph.D. is a historian and consultant on energy and geopolitics. She is the author of
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