| From Ethanol Producer Magazine:
IIEA LAUNCHES CAMPAIGN AGAINST VALERO ACQUISITION
By Anna Austin, Feb. 26, 2009
The International Institute for Ecological Agriculture, a promoter of permaculture and alternative fuels, has launched a campaign opposing Texas-based oil refiner Valero Energy Corp.’s bid to acquire the assets of bankrupt ethanol producer VeraSun Energy Corp.
In February, VeraSun announced it had signed an agreement with Valero to sell some of its assets to the company for $280 million, in addition to the value of inventory and certain pre-paid expenses. (Read “Valero Energy offers bid to buy VeraSun assets.”)
David Blume, executive director of IIEA, said Valero’s offer demonstrates the end-game strategy for last year’s aggressive food versus fuel propaganda and price war manipulation campaign implemented by the International Oil cartel. “The campaign is systematically engineering the collapse of America’s fledgling independent renewable fuel and energy producers market,” he said.
Blume said oil companies have used the Commodities Futures Trading system to artificially drive the price of corn up by offering wildly inflated process for corn, while depressing the price of ethanol, essentially gaming the futures market. “The impact of artificially high corn prices is that plants like VeraSun, that aren’t built and supported by farmer-owners, but rather by capital investors, had to pay high prices to compete with Big Oil to buy corn and make fuel,” he said. “Meanwhile, the futures price of alcohol was driven down by Big Oil’s fuel monopoly—easy since they buy over 99 percent of alcohol fuel produced.”
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