Big Oil asks for a truce

An industry bigwig sits down with green energy-policy wonks, and says the oil companies are not anti-ethanol. Believe it?

NEW YORK – As oil prices creep ever higher, the petroleum industry has begun keeping some strange company.

No, not the usual gang of high-priced oil lobbyists, dubious foreign (and domestic) despots, Texas politicians, and so on. I’m talking about folks who are in favor of promoting the use of alternative fuels — specifically ethanol, the alterna-fuel that’s made from corn and, one day, from other plants.

The Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, and FORTUNE Magazine recently held a lunchtime panel in Washington, D.C., on the future of ethanol. It followed on a Fortune article in January as well as ongoing policy work by the big thinkers at Aspen.

The usual suspects turned out for lunch, a well-dressed, policy-oriented bunch from the capital that for the most part is motivated to see ethanol succeed. The list included prominent environmentalists, officials from the departments of Energy and Agriculture, a congressional staffer from a corn state, various other think-tankers (economists and not-so-dismal scientists), lobbyists for corn growers and even an investment banker raising money for ethanol plants.

Fortune