Yes but drilling for oil is not a boondoggle. Ethanol is. You are apparently not aware of more recent studies done by Pimentel in conjunction with others.
Hey, I am all for drilling oil domestically anywhere it is feasable for the driller.
Ethanol has been around my region since the mid 1970’s.
I have watched local coal mines close. I have seen trainloads of coal come in from Wyoming. Recently a power plant in my region was killed by govermentalists who pulled the permission slip.
The Missouri River used to ship bargeloads of grain down to St Louis and then the Gulf. envirowackos think the pallid sturgeon is more important so they regulate the water flow so barges can’t run as often. So a bargeload of corn has to be shipped in 40 semis, on overcrowded highways, burning $5.00 diesel fuel to St Louis. Why waste that kind of energy when the same corn can be trucked 30 miles, and the farmer gets paid the same cost per bushel as he would get in St. Louis? The one thing about ethanol economics that Pimmential never acknowledges is that 90% of the money from the product stays in the local economy. With oil the money kept locally is less than 1% and the rest goes out of the regional economy to foreign places.
The one thing we have is plentiful corn and wide open spaces to plant it. Farmers decided that feeding the World for free wasn’t cutting it anymore. So we make ethanol and use the distillers grain to feed the beef. I haven’t seen any shortages of corn flakes. Ethanol don’t need battleship escorts and 200,000 soldier security forces in foreign countries. Add those costs into the price of oil. And don’t forget about the people who have died fighting to protect our foreign oil supply. To my knowledge, no soldier has made the ultimate sacrifice for ethanol.