Sorry, I got my numbers wrong - it takes at least 1.3 gallons of oil to make one gallon of corn ethanol.
Which makes it still a bad idea, just not so much of one. This does not include the water costs of corn ethanol (Google that) or the opportunity costs of former food-growing lands needing to be devoted to growing something we’re going to burn.
That number comes from David Pimmental, and is widely and thoroughly discredited. He stacked his energy balance spreadsheet by considering the energy put into casting the iron and steel for ag equipment to be part of the energy input, and he considered the food that the farmer and farm workers ate to be part of the input energy for ethanol.
Here’s a big clue how wrong this is: If the farmer isn’t farming corn for ethanol, he still buys and uses farm equipment. Until the farmer dies, he’s still gonna eat, regardless of whether he’s growing corn for ethanol.
There are lies, damned lies and stats (when abused) and Pimmental abused them like a red-headed stepchild.
Ethanol’s energy balance is positive. It isn’t hugely positive, but it is positive. That’s been held up in many USDA and independent studies now. The #1 place where ethanol production can be made more energy positive is in how they dry out the distilllers’ grains at the end of the cycle.
Maybe your numbers are still wrong. Source?
That makes more sense. Combined with light-bulb's comments, that oil used to grow the corn is probably in the form of diesel. So we might be saving gasoline but at the expense of using more diesel.
I'm fine with killing the program first and then looking at it. If the information presented here is anywhere close to accurate, then they shouldn't have to look at it long to confirm killing it was the right decision.