Hey cowboy, got one of those little flex-fuel badges on your truck? If so, you can now fill 'er up with E85 at 20 Kroger gas stations in the Dallas and Houston areas. Kroger and VeraSun Energy announced today that VeraSun's mix of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline (which VeraSun calls VE85) will now be sold at the Kroger filling stations. There's a list of these stations and their addresses after the jump. The 20 new ethanol retail pumps brings VeraSuns national total to over 140 in 13 states and DC. 44 of these pumps are at Kroger stores.

Texas is a good place to expand ethanol availability, because the Texas State Energy Conservation Office says that there are more registered flexible fuel vehicles in Texas than in any other state. According to the National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition, it's likely there are more than 500,000 registered flex-fuel vehicles in Texas and, now, thirty pumps to feed them all.

Ohio-based grocery chain Kroger also has gas stations at many of their stores. Kroger is now teaming up with VeraSun Energy and Enterprise Rent-a-car to install E85 pumps at twenty of their stations in Ohio and Kentucky. Enterprise has been labeling some of their rental outlets that are located close to E85 pumps as VE85TM/FlexFuel branches.

Their location on Glenway Ave. in Cincinnati will be a FlexFuel branch. Enterprise will have GM flex-fuel vehicles for at least a quarter of the cars at their FlexFuel branches and keep them fueled with E85. They will also provide customers with materials encouraging them to use E85 and showing where to get the biofuel.

[Source: General Motors]

With all those stories about biofuel conferences and production plants in Texas we had last week (see here and here), it's refreshing to read that there's also news about biofuel that people can get their hands on now. The first E85 pump has opened In Houston at a Kroger store and Kroger says it will sell E85 at 18 stores in Houston and Dallas in the near future. The news comes from the Houston Chronicle, which says there are 354,000 flexible fuel vehicles in Texas, more than in any other state. Kroger was selling E85 for $2.59 last Monday, about 30 cents less than they were charging for regular unleaded, even though ethanol's price is "through the roof right now,' according to Dan Gilligan, president of the Arlington, Va.-based Petroleum Marketing Association of America as quoted in the article. "I don't know how you could sell it for $2.59 and hang in there," he said.

[Source: Houston Chronicle]