Last week Kansas Governor Sam Brownback helped celebrate some new higher ethanol blends offerings in Garnett. Sandra’s Quick Stop held a pump promotion to create awareness around their new blender pumps that offer consumers the choices of E15, E30 and E85 fuels. Funding for the station came from USDA grant money along with support from several Kansas groups.

Gov. Brownback said during his remarks that ethanol plays an important role in the state’s economy and higher blends will build markets for the renewable fuel. “One of the keys then is getting us higher blend ratios. I think our new administration, they should push to allow higher blend ratios, higher blends. We can do it, we can do it safely, we can do it well. This is homegrown, this is making America great again,” Gov. Brownback said. “Kansas is a great production state. . . We need markets here, and we need markets overseas.”

The retail station is near East Kansas Agri Energy (EKAE) whose President and CEO Jeff Oestmann is a veteran. He spoke about the importance of domestic fuels. “I spent eleven years in the Marine Corps in various locations around the world, and I can tell you one thing, I would rather buy my fuel from the Midwest than the Middle East. So the concept of bringing our fuel from our plant to locations like this is very unique and I want to see a lot more of that as we go forward,” Oestmann said.

Speakers also included Robert White, Renewable Fuels Association vice president of industry relations and Kansas Corn Commission CEO Greg Krissek. Staff from EKAE, RFA and Kansas Corn pumped ethanol fuel for customers and answered questions about ethanol blends.