Fuel blenders got $3.3 Bil for blending ethanol in 2007. Gas prices were 15% lower saving $82 Biln

[JohnWxy]

Fuel blenders received $3.3 Billion ($.51 per gallon blended) in Petroleum Excise tax credits for blending 6.5 billion gallons of ethanol.

Ethanol, by replacing gasoline brought down the price of gas about 15% (http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=95429">Francisco Blanch, Commodities Strategist, Merrill Lynch). Since we consumed a bit over 142 billion gallons of gas in 2007, this price reduction saved us about $85.4 Billion in total gasoline costs.

The NET Cost of ethanol to the country was a SAVINGS of about $82 billion.

Also, without ethanol we would have spent an additional $16.5 billion for an additional 228 million barrels of oil in 2007. This money would have gone out of the country to import that oil.

The money was instead spent for domestically produced product adding $47.6 billion to gross domestic output and created 238,000 jobs in all sectors of the economy – 46,000 in the manufacturing sector alone.