Biodiesel Market Dynamics in Portland


A Daily Journal of Commerce article suggests that the capital investment to distribute biodiesel in various blends coupled with the City of Portland mandate, might force some distributors to choose either to invest or get out of the City.


7 responses to “Biodiesel Market Dynamics in Portland”

  1. The people responsible for this article contacted me to ask permission to use information from my site. They emailed me at 8am with a “deadline” for response by 11am. Needless to say, since PDXBiodiesel.org is simply a “hobby” site, I didn’t make the deadline. In fact I hadn’t even checked my PDXBiodiesel.org email account by 11am. But when I did try to call them at the number they left I got a “disconnected” message, and I got no email response to my inquiries.

    I believe that much of this is FUD being spread by industry that is opposed to change.

    This “mandate” is really not all that complicated, and I believe that it really opens the door for the nimble companies to step in and grow in the market place.

    I just don’t get how this is any different than the tri-county areas (Portland Metro, consisting of Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas counties) winter Ethanol blend requirements that have been in place for years.

    Gas stations have had to have a 10% Ethanol blend during the winter months in the metro area for years – but not other places in the state. So that “blending” for just a few months out of the year for just the metro area went OK – but this “new” blending of diesel and biodiesel is a huge burden?

    Come on.

    Especially since biodiesel blending is VERY easy. Biodiesel can be “splash blended” which means it can be blended on a truck on the way to fill the tanks at the gas station. 5% is very little, only one gallon of biodiesel out of every 20 gallons of diesel.

    Say you have a 5000 gallon tanker truck that fills diesel tanks at fueling stations. All it has to do is fill with 4750 gallons of diesel no. 2, and then head to a biodiesel distributor and top off with 250 gallons of biodiesel. The “blend” is then “splash blended” inside the tank en-route to the fueling stations.

    If the distributors keep tanks of biodiesel on site, like I know Carson Oil does (as I use it), then the 5% blend is easy.

    Minimal impact.

    You get the same kind of opposition any time the government forces industry to improve things. Like seat belts, fuel economy, and pollution controls.

    However, even though I am a biodiesel user and advocate – I do NOT support government mandates of more than 5% biodiesel. Simply because the 5% mandate makes sense with the new ULSD – and if people want to go above and beyond that it should be their own choice.

    Personally I have used B20 in the winter, B50 in the spring and fall, and B99/B100 in the summer for over three years now in two different vehicles, with more than 80,000 combined miles.

  2. So on a rail freight tanker car of 20,000 gollons that’s 5000 gallons of biediesel. That’s awesome.

    How’s the supply going for Tri-met? Did they fully switch over yet? I really love the busses in Pierce & King County with their clean burning non-stinking natural gas. It would be nice to at least know Tri-met’s busses are clean too.

  3. I believe TriMet is working on it. I’ve heard that, so far, they use much more than anybody else in the region. And that probably has a decent effect on market dynamics.

  4. Adron-

    Actually, that would be 1,000 gallons of biodiesel to make up 5% of a 20,000-gallon rail freight tanker car. 5,000 gallons would be 25%. :-)

    I’m also curious to hear a full progress report on Tri-Met. What is their current blend number?

    I splash-blend in my tank, and use a spreadsheet to calculate my percentage once I get home. Right now, I’m running a mix that is approximately B85. It smells kind of like when you turn on a cast iron pan and you’ve got some oil in there and you pre-heat up the oil a little bit before you, say, add the onions. Not a bad smell at all!!

    I also keep a spare 5 gallons of 100% biodiesel in the car at all times, just in case I run out… like a lot of diesel vehicles, the fuel hose in mine does not go to the very bottom of the tank (supposedly to avoid sucking the bottom-sludge up into the system), so I have the potential to “run out of fuel” with 1/4 tank or so still registering on the gauge. The nice thing about five gallons of biodiesel inside the vehicle with me… is that you can’t tell it’s there at all. :-D

    cheers,
    ~Garlynn

  5. Let’s think about this for a moment. Has anyone determined how many acres of productive farmland which could grow food for eating would be used for “bio-fuel”? How much is this going to make the price of our food go up? How much are our taxes going to be raised after they subsidize? I wonder, how much acreage would be used if 100% of cars were required to use bio-fuel? How many people will starve to death as a result of this push? I don’t think the politicans are thinking about the larger economic picture, they are just trying to appease the environmental lobby.

  6. Let’s think about this for a moment. Has anyone determined how many acres of productive farmland which could grow food for eating would be used for “bio-fuel”? How much is this going to make the price of our food go up? How much are our taxes going to be raised after they subsidize? I wonder, how much acreage would be used if 100% of cars were required to use bio-fuel? How many people will starve to death as a result of this push? I don’t think the politicans are thinking about the larger economic picture, they are just trying to appease the environmental lobby.

  7. Greg –

    The solutions to our fuel consumption issues will not come 100% from any one source. To dismiss a single concept because it won’t scale to a 100% solution misses the point. We can reduce our dependence on foreign sources a few bits by using biofuels from appropriate sources, a few bits by encouraging or mandating more efficient vehicles, a few bits by improving alternative modes such as transit, walking, bicycles, a few bits by better locating housing, jobs, and commercial activity, a few bits by encouraging telecommuting, a few bits by encouraging carpooling etc.

    No one idea will solve our problems – but we stand a good chance at significant improvement by combining a mix of ideas.

    And to respond to your specific point about starvation, most bio-fuel-supporting environmentalists I know are against corn-based ethanol for that very reason – it requires a large government subsidy of a human food crop to make fuel instead. Not a particularly great idea. But that doesn’t mean that all biological sources for conversion into vehicle fuel must be similarly dismissed.

    – Bob R.

Leave a Reply to Adron Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *