Driving around South Carolina and Iowa in a flex-fuel vehicle? Time for you to fill up your tank with E85 at a promotional price on Wednesday, July 23, a Kum & Go station in Elk Point, South Dakota. The stations with the odd spelling are offering E85 for $1.85 a gallon. The following day, July 24, the Kum & Go in Sloan, Iowa is matching the deal offered at the South Dakota station. Both fuel promotions begin at 10 a.m. and end at 2 p.m., and are being sponsored by Kum & Go, the American Lung Association of the Upper Midwest and the Iowa and South Dakota Clean Air Choice Teams. Thanks to Bob for the tip.

[Source: Clean Air Choice]

Photo by Skidrd. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.

Two small updates today on the status of biodiesel in the U.S.

First, Missouri is looking at setting a biodiesel mandate of five percent, which could match the highest biodiesel mandate in the country. New Mexico will be B5 by 2012 and four other states have B2 mandates. The Missouri bill passed the first preliminary approval hurdle this week and now needs to be voted on in the state House and Senate before moving forward.

Meanwhile, in South Dakota, the Governor has signed into law a piece of legislation that drops the tax on diesel fuel by two cents a gallon if it contains at least five percent biodiesel blended in. But don't start counting your pennies just yet; the law only kicks in once South Dakota can make at least 20 million gallons of the biofuel a year.

[Source: AP, Energy Current]

There has been talk of a continental U.S. ethanol pipeline before. Back in 2006, Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) proposed legislation on the issue, but it didn't get very far. The idea didn't die, though. This past week, Magellan Midstream Partners and Buckeye Partners announced that the two companies would begin thinking about building a 1,700-mile pipeline across half the continent to bring ethanol from the corn states of Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota and South Dakota to Pennsylvania and New York. The idea, the companies said, is to bring up to 10 million gallons of the biofuel "safely and efficiently" to the Northeast every day. How much would this cost? The companies estimate $3 billion and "several years," but more details will be forthcoming after Magellan and Buckeye Partners finish a feasibility study later this year. For his part, Senator Harkin is still very much in favor of a pipeline.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention this pipeline story as well.

[Source: Magellan]