Austin Scott: “Let's just take one for a few moments and put this one on the table, because I truly believe that this is one of the…”

“Let's just take one for a few moments and put this one on the table, because I truly believe that this is one of the major directions we are going to have to go in. As you know, one of the problems with our dependence on oil and petroleum, aside from the Middle East and the political volatility there and the unstableness that is there, even if we had and were able to produce some of this oil on our own here, we have a refining problem. We are very short in our refining capacity. It has been almost a quarter of a century since we even built a new refinery. There are reasons for that, environmental, people don't want them around, but they are not there. But that is another reason. So, one of my interesting visits not long ago was to go down to South America, to Brazil, to visit Brazil. One of the reasons I wanted to go to Brazil was because I wanted to find out what they were doing and how they were doing it with their energy problem. Here is one salient fact: Brazil and Argentina both are not dependent upon the Middle East for oil. They have moved very rapidly and are setting the curve for ethanol production. Now, 85 percent of their automobiles are ``flex'' automobiles, in other words, running on a combination of mostly ethanol made from sugar cane.”