Post

Ethanol gaining profitability

Last week’s stocks and planting intentions reports from USDA pushed corn prices down on the Chicago Board of Trade and that could be a real shot-in-the-arm for ethanol. Bloomberg reports the cheaper corn widened the price gap between ethanol and gasoline to 72.69 cents per gallon in New York on Monday morning.

The price for May-delivered denatured alcohol dropped 6.4 cents to $2.369 on the Chicago Board of Trade. The April contract which expires Wednesday fell 4 cents to $2.411 a gallon.

The increased profitability of ethanol should prompt companies to restart at least some of the more-than-20 ethanol plants that have been idled around the country. On March 22nd, Valero announced they were going to restart their Linden, Indiana plant.