President Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser argues that American vehicles should be flex-fuel ready, capable of using methanol as well as gasoline, to counter rising oil prices that threaten to plunge the nation back into a recession.
Robert McFarlane served as Reagan’s national security adviser from 1983 to 1985, and is the co-founder of the United States Energy Security Council, a nonprofit organization committed to energy security.
Writing in Friday’s
Wall Street Journal, McFarlane notes that new discoveries of huge amounts of natural gas embedded in shale deposits in several states can be used to make methanol, a clean and safe liquid fuel.
And new cars and trucks can be adapted to burn methanol, ethanol, gasoline or any combination of the three for less than $100 per vehicle.
It has been estimated that producers can deliver an amount of methanol fuel equivalent to the energy in a gallon of gasoline for about $3.
“But we must get busy, because we’re about to face additional upward pressure on the price of oil,” McFarlane writes.
The price of oil could rise to more than $200 a barrel in the next two to three years, and at that price “we will go back into recession and stay there for a long time,” according to McFarlane.
He urges passage of bills now pending in both houses of Congress that would require car makers to produce flex-fuel ready vehicles.
See Christopher Ruddy’s article on flex fuels — Click Here Now.
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