By Bruce E. Dale , Posted November 18, 2008 | 11:42 AM (EST), thehuffingtonpost.com

Never mind the recent decline in oil prices from their record highs. The age of cheap oil is over. And it will not return. Shrinking supplies of conventional crude, rising demand from emerging markets and the shadowy presence of speculators have forever ended the days of $20 per barrel oil and $1 per gallon gasoline. If oil were “only” expensive, it would be painful but not particularly dangerous. But because remaining conventional oil supplies are increasingly located in hostile or unstable countries, our oil addiction is also a huge threat to our national security. We need to think clearly about alternatives to oil.

We are safer as a nation when oil alternatives fit easily into our existing fuel distribution and vehicle system, stretch domestic oil supplies and can be produced in large volumes at reasonable cost. We already have this in the blending of 10 percent ethanol (E10) into more than 70 percent of regular unleaded gasoline sold in this country and in 85 percent ethanol (E85) for the more than 7 million flex-fuel vehicles capable of using higher blends of ethanol on the road today.

About nine billion gallons of ethanol will be produced in the US this year, most of it from corn. That is a fraction of the 140 billion gallons of gasoline America will use, but much larger volumes of “cellulosic ethanol” are on the horizon. Cellulosic materials include agricultural and urban wastes, woody materials and grasses. Call it “grassoline.” Corn ethanol and grassoline can help ease our dangerous oil addiction, but we must not be sidetracked by irrelevant issues. (Read the full article here)