Iowa Congressman Leonard Boswell is co-sponsoring legislation to study the feasibility of shipping ethanol across the country in pipelines. Boswell says there’s a distribution problem with getting the ethanol outside the central United States, and he says there doesn’t seem to be any progress made on the issue. Boswell says there should be a study of an ethanol pipeline, and also a look at problems that are supposedly caused when ethanol is shipped through current pipelines.
Boswell , a Democrat from Des Moines, says oil companies are successfully using the pipelines to distribute their other products. There’s already a large network of pipelines through the country and Boswell says he’s talked with the oil companies and tried to tell them that ethanol is not a threat to their business. He says the oil companies can be part of the solution to shipping ethanol without hurting their own business. The "Ethanol Infrastructure Act" directs the Department of Energy to study the issue.
"Let’s look at it and see what it take, and what it would cost and would it be practical to put a pipeline in," Boswell says, "and at the same time, while we’re doing that, lets also have a hard look at what it’d take science-wise running ethanol through the pipeline now." Boswell is introducing the legislation along with Kansas Representative Jerry Moran. Iowa Senator Tom Harkin has introduced similar legislation in the Senate.