John Block Reports from Washington

Hello everybody out there in farm country. This radio commentary is brought to you by Monsanto, and John Deere. They are all friends, supporters, and allies of a healthy farm economy and prosperous rural America. Thank you.

And now for today’s commentary—

Perhaps it took 2 or 3 years, but it seems like overnight. We are not going crazy worrying about a possible energy shortage. We had long gas lines in the 70s. Prices skyrocketed. We were begging Saudi Arabia to pump more gas in the 90s.

But now – with war and complete turmoil in the Middle East, we don’t seem to care. We care about the people, but we’re not worried about the price of gasoline. In fact, this week, the price of petroleum hit an 8-month low.

Our energy security has improved dramatically. With the use of new drilling procedures called fracking, we are extracting oil and gas that we didn’t even know was there before. Canada is pumping oil and shipping it to the U.S. We should be building the Keystone Pipeline to deliver it, but President Obama has not approved the pipeline. Mexico is ramping up their oil and gas production.

Don’t forget about the fact that 10% of our gasoline is ethanol. According to a new report released by the Renewable Fuels Association and conducted by ABF Economics – here is what the study says: “Ethanol is the most economically competitive motor fuel in the world.” “U.S. ethanol has emerged as the lowest cost transportation fuel and octane source in the world.” I might add that it is clean-burning and renewable. The study found ethanol to cost between 30 and 60 cents per gallon less than petroleum. That means when you fill your car up, you will be saving 10 cents per gallon just because your fuel is 10% ethanol.

Not to dwell on it, but we don’t hear much about the utilization of corn to make ethanol driving up the cost of food – not with a big crop and the price of corn cut in half. Looks like we have enough corn to use some of it to make fuel.

We have witnessed life-changing developments in the energy industry. The change has happened so fast. We are not going to be held hostage by others who used to control the world energy supply. We have our own. We can limit our involvement in the Middle East because we don’t have to protect our energy supply.

It’s a new day!

That’s it for this week. Until next week, I am John Block in Washington, D.C.