While the U.S. hydraulic frackingindustry hit its peak earlier this year by reaching the awesome production of 10 million barrels per day (matching the Saudis and Russians), the White House-inspired biofuels industry expanded its tax-advantaged percentage usage of each gasoline gallon component and continued to broaden its base.
Little known is the fact the President Nixon-inspired biofuels approach, implemented by his instigated Environmental Protection Agency in the early 1970s, established a legal limit of 10% ethanol component back in 1978. However, this tax-advantaged supplement did not receive congressional endorsement until 2005 when the Energy Policy Act created its renewable fuel standard, requiring 7.5 billion gal. of renewable fuel annually — primarily from corn ethanol — to be blended into the fuel supply by 2012, consisting primarily of that corn derivative.