Refiners Fined for Failure to Use a Non Existent Fuel

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/busin ... .html?_r=1
When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law.
Green

But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-0 ... atech.html

Range Fuel’s plant, located in Soperton, Georgia, was completed in 2010 and was shut in January 2011 without ever producing ethanol. It was designed to process wood chips into as much as 10 million gallons (37.8 million liters) of biofuel a year with plans to expand this to 100 million gallons.

The Agriculture Department announced an $80 million loan guarantee for the project on the final day of President George W. Bush’s term. The Energy Department, under the same administration, offered a $76 million grant for the plant.

Range received $46.3 million of the grant and $42 million of the guaranteed loan, before the outstanding balance was repurchased by the Agriculture Department Nov. 17, according to an Agriculture Department document. Broomfield, Colorado-based Range received more than $160 million from private investors before shutting the plant.

samhill wrote:Wonder if Range Fuels is a division of Haliburton.