Can flex-fuel cars put US on the road to low oil prices?

[hunter]

7. Oil refineries have been increasing their use of natural gas, gas liquids, and electricity.

So we are, in some sense, already living in that "flex fuel" world. The gasoline or diesel fuel is the same but it takes fewer barrels of oil to make it.

In some places where natural gas is very inexpensive it is being turned directly into fuel oil and gasoline.

The original MTBE fiasco was a similar scheme. Cheap natural gas was turned into MTBE and mixed with lower octane gasoline to make a higher octane product that cost less than regular gasoline and required less oil to make.

Flex fuel vehicles are most useful for ethanol, but unnecessary. Ethanol could easily be transformed into ordinary gasoline components but that would make the math of ethanol use look even sillier than it already is.

We had a flex fuel vehicle for many years (until my kid let a friend drive it and wrecked it -- nobody was hurt thanks to air bags and seatbelts) but we rarely used anything but gasoline in that car. Higher percentage ethanol mixes were generally unavailable in California.