Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Burning clean

A tidbit, courtesy of Paul Mirengoff at Powerline:

Thus, we learn from Wynton Hall at Big Peace that the United States Air Force spent $639,000 on 11,000 gallons of alcohol-to-jet fuel from Gevo Inc., a Colorado biofuels company, at $59 a gallon. The cost of petroleum is presently $3.60 a gallon, and one imagines that the government can use its purchasing power to get a considerably lower price than that.

So why pay $59 per gallon? It turns out that one of the venture capital funders behind Gevo Inc. is Vinod Khosla. Since 1996, opensecrets.org reports that Mr. Khosla has made $474,534 in campaign donations, 86 percent of which went to Democrats. As of this March, when Gevo filed with the SEC, Khosla’s firm owned a 27 percent stake in the company.

Just to put things in perspective, according to their latest ad (PDF) our friends down the street at St. Anthony Village Wine and Spirits are selling Jim Beam bourbon at $24.99 for a 1.75-liter bottle. Two bottles of Jim Beam would net out cheaper than that jet fuel. I think St. Anthony Village Wine and Spirits is missing a bet here.

4 comments:

Bike Bubba said...

I think that Everclear is cheaper than that.....good grief, close to a cool million to fuel a fighter jet about twice?

For that matter, since it's replacing diesel, soybean oil is a heck of a lot cheaper, too. Are they putting gold in the stuff?

Mr. D said...

Are they putting gold in the stuff?

No, they're putting the gold in Vinod Khosla's pocket.

Gino said...

govt by and for the connected people.

the rest of us just get squeezed for its provision.

Anonymous said...

Wouldn't this transaction equate to money laudering in the private sector world?