Back in March, Tom Philpott flagged
some moves from Shell Oil and Valero Energy (the largest U.S. oil
refiner) that indicated Big Oil was falling for biofuels. Now, the NYT shows Tom had it right
with a piece detailing the increasing amount of money Big Oil is
spreading around to biofuel startups. This comes despite Big Oil’s
historical hostility to the ethanol industry. In fact, their objections
to conventional ethanol might sound strangely familiar:

For decades, the big oil companies and the farm lobby have been
fighting about ethanol, with the farmers pushing to produce more of it
and the refiners arguing it was a boondoggle that would do little to
solve the country’s energy problems.

Oil companies still dislike corn ethanol, dubbing it corrosive and
inefficient. Instead, their new investments are in second generation
biofuels that use non-food crops, waste wood, and garbage as feedstocks.

If I were the National Corn Growers Association, I think I might
start getting nervous. They’re already in the fight of their lives with
the EPA and Congress over corn ethanol’s place in the Renewable Fuel
Standard and cap-and-trade legislation. Now they have to deal with Big
Oil as a direct competitor. And it’s not too much of a stretch to
conclude from the article that Big Oil wants nothing more than to put
corn ethanol on the ashheap of history—if only because Big Oil still
retains a fondness for grinding its competitors into the dust.

Click here for the rest of this article.