Dianne Feinstein: “in this article, Schrag mentions: Now that ``energy crisis'' and Enron have become household words, Californians had…”

“in this article, Schrag mentions: Now that ``energy crisis'' and Enron have become household words, Californians had better get familiar with ethanol and Archer Daniels Midland. ADM is already an admitted price-fixing firm. Three of its executives have served prison time for colluding with competitors. In 1996, ADM pled guilty and paid a $100 million fine for conspiring to set the price of an animal feed additive. That is the company that has a 41-percent share of ethanol. The ethanol industry tells us they will be able to produce enough ethanol to meet future demands under this mandate. But what if some of the planned ethanol plants fail to be built? This is a key point. Plants could be delayed, or not coming online at all. We are finding this with the electricity-generation facilities right now in California. Plants that said they were going to come in, because of the economy, or because of their own financial conditions, or one thing or another, have decided no--they are not really going to go ahead with it. What is to preclude that same thing from happening with respect to ethanol? The answer to the question is nothing precludes it. The GAO reports: Projected capacity may be lower if some plants cease production, plants under construction don't come online in time, or some new plants' plans do not materialize. The ethanol industry is asking this Nation to make a blind leap of faith that there will be a sufficient amount of ethanol in the future.…”