The president of oil-rich Venezuela is campaigning against President Bush’s plan to increase ethanol use in the United States, with the help of his close friend, Cuban President Fidel Castro.
According to NewsMax, Hugo Chavez pledged to undermine a U.S.-Brazil ethanol agreement in a speech made on Tuesday.
“We are working on an alternative proposal,” he said without elaborating. “Just as we overthrew the Free Trade Area of the Americas, we will now overthrow” the ethanol plan.
The Miami Herald notes that Chavez’ attitude is a sudden about face. Until just a few weeks ago, the leftist Chávez was pressing ahead with a five-year project to sow almost 700,000 acres with sugar cane to produce ethanol. With the technical support of Brazil and Cuba, 15 new sugar mills were planned to produce 30,000 barrels of ethanol a day.
However, Chavez says he has no conflict with Brazil, one of the Latin American countries with which he pledges to “share” Venezuela’s enormous oil reserves, or with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Bloomberg reports, “We’ll never fight with Brazil on this, we’ll never fight with Lula,” Chavez said. “The world press says, `It’s `Fidel and Chavez against Bush and Lula.’ No, it’s not like that. It’s Fidel and Chavez against the U.S. empire.”
Castro launched his own attack against the Bush ethanol plan in recently published editorials, saying that “more than three billion people in the world [are] condemned to premature death from hunger and thirst” as a result of Bush’s “sinister idea of converting food into fuel.”
Meanwhile, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega is also criticizing the Bush ethanol “fantasy campaign.” Press TV reports Ortega said that he fully agrees with Cuban President Fidel Castro that large-scale production of ethanol as a fuel would affect food production for humankind.
The first batch of biodiesel is expected to be ready in one week. Plant manager Russ Read said the production time will be cut to 12 hours once the testing phase is done. “We’ll be going at a slow speed and making sure all the pumps and level sensors work.”
When asked about the expected rule change during a press conference announcing the administration’s new Renewable Fuels Standard, administrator Stephen L. Johnson responded, “If you are using corn to produce alcohol for human consumption, you are under one air standard. If you are producing alcohol to be used as a fuel, there’s a different standard,” he said. “That doesn’t make sense. There should be a level playing field, a consistent approach, that is health protective and environmentally protective. And that’s what we are in the rule-making process of doing right now.”
It comes as no surprise that the 
At a press conference today, EPA Administrator Johnson, joined by Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator Nicole Nason, discussed the RFS program, increasing the use of alternative fuels and modernizing CAFÉ standards for cars.
“You don’t have to sacrifice the fun aspects of a car. All you have to do is change your fuel,” said Martin Tobias, CEO of Imperium Renewables, a biodiesel refiner that developed the Pimp My Ride biodiesel experiment with MTV. “It completely blew away the Lamborghini. It was only two-thirds down the track when the Impala crossed the finish line.”
The 
Racing Legend Bobby Rahal and Tony George, the CEO and Founder of the Indy Racing League, will be the featured guests at the 
Officials in Monroe County, New York are working with 
USDA Agricultural Research Service scientists at the Eastern Regional Research Center in Wyndmoor, Pa., are investigating ways to avoid overburdening the corn market as ethanol production expands.