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Recently, DFL Sen. Amy Klobuchar teamed up with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Gov. Mark Dayton to talk about alternative fuels.

"We are making almost as much biofuels now as we import oil from Canada," 

Klobuchar said during an April 20, 2011 news conference.

Klobuchar got this one wrong. The United States imports a lot more oil than the biofuel it produces.

The most recent annual data on oil imports and ethanol production is from 2010. According to the Energy Information Administration, U.S. companies produced a daily average of 883,000 barrels of ethanol and biodiesel combined. Meanwhile, the nation imported an average of 1.88 million barrels of oil from Canada.

So, Canadian oil imports are almost twice the amount of biofuel we produce.

Klobuchar based her calculation on the actual gasoline produced from oil imported from Canada, says spokesman Linden Zakula. Generally speaking, a 42 gallon barrel of oil makes about 20 gallons of gasoline. "In the future she looks forward to using the more exact term," Zakula said.

Among other sources, Klobuchar's staff points to a report put together by Growth Energy, a Washington, D.C.-based group that represents ethanol producers, which shows that in 2009, the U.S. made about 750,000 barrels of ethanol daily and imported a little over 1 million barrels of gasoline from Canada.

But even then, energy experts point out that a gallon of ethanol doesn't contain as much energy as a gallon of gasoline. They say comparisons among fuels are more accurate when they're based on energy content.

Klobuchar said that we make nearly as much biofuel as we import oil from Canada. In fact, the U.S.  imports about twice as much Canadian oil as domestically produced alternatives.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on biofuels

USDA chief discusses renewable energy in Minn.

Monthly U.S. Net Imports from Canada of Crude Oil (Thousands of Barrels per Day), 

 Biofuels in the U.S. Transportation Sector

Crude Oil and Total Petroleum Imports Top 15 Countries,

 Gasoline Gallon Equivalent (GGE) Definition

Interview, Linden Zakula, spokesman, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, April 26, 2011

Interview, Chris Thorne, spokesman, Growth Energy, April 26, 2011

Interview, Steven G. Grape, U.S. Energy Information Administration, Office of Oil, Gas, and Coal Supply Statistics, April 26, 2011

Interview, Elizabeth Wilson, Associate Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy and Law at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, April 26, 2011

Politics and Government News

Capitol View®

Catharine Richert

Author

Klobuchar misstates the amount of U.S. biofuel produced compared to oil imports

PoliGraph: Klobuchar energy claim wrong

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