As prices at the pump inch towards the 1981 record (adjusted for inflation), ethanolics and petrolists face off on the front of The NYT this morning to apportion the blame ("Oil Industry Says Biofuel Push May Keep Gas Prices High").

The news? Oil companies don't like ethanol. They don't make it--not yet, anyway. And with all the subsidies and mandates pushing cornstarch-based ethanol towards its supposed 15 billion gallon maximum production level--which level amounts to a pile of assumptions propped up by 'what-ifs'--the oil companies are stomping their little feet and refusing to build more domestic refineries.

It's not just that their feelings are hurt after being caught cheating on Clean Air Act rules and lying about it. They just can't afford it.

"Big Oil companies are reaping record profits," the chairman [Rep. Bart Stupak, D-TN] said. During the first three months of 2007, he pointed out, Royal Dutch Shell's profits were $7.3 billion, Chevron made $4.7 billion, ConocoPhillips made $3.5 billion and ExxonMobil's profits were $9.2 billion.

But it turns out chutzpah can be made from either crude oil or corn. Back to the Times:

As a result of the push for biofuels, and encouraged by federal subsidies and grants [and a federal mandate to make 7.5 billion gallons of it by 2012!--KC], dozens of ethanol distilleries are being planned. These investments should double the annual production of ethanol from corn to 15 billion gallons by 2012 from about 6 billion gallons today.

But given farmland constraints and the need to use corn for food, that is as much ethanol as can possibly be produced from corn, according to the ethanol industry’s own calculations. Ethanol producers recognize that it is not clear how an additional 20 billion gallons of ethanol — President Bush has called for 35 billion gallons of biofuels by 2017 — would be produced from cellulose or biomass.

“The current thinking is that based on today’s technology, we suspect corn-based ethanol will generate at least 15 billion gallons,” said Brian Jennings, the executive vice president of the American Coalition for Ethanol, an association of ethanol and corn producers. “Beyond that, it’s uncertain. The marketplace will make that determination on where it will come from.”

You have to hand it to an industry--oh, and how we do hand it to this one--that is largely a creature of taxpayer and consumer subsidies when it can stand back, take in the big picture, and predict that "the marketplace" will eventually sort things out. Can't wait to see how the invisible hand sorts out the huge increases in gas and food prices in a year when we're at 15 billion gallons of ethanol and 100-plus million acres of corn and we come up short of....rain.

Ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors: If we can send a man to the moon, surely--I say, surely--we can figure out how to water corn with assumptions!

Congress meanwhile has fingered the real culprit: price-gougers in the gas biz. The hunt for them is in full cry again on the Hill. (Can someone send in evidence of success from past hunts--preferably captured gas-gougers sprawled across the hood of a big, regulation black congressional SUV?) The heartless crooks would face stiff penalties under a House-passed bill, by golly. Except Snidely--I mean, Bush--will veto it.

Which will leave the true innocents in this saga bound, gagged and stretched across the interstate. The NYT finale...

Some consumers, meanwhile, are trying to drive less or are simply absorbing the higher cost. “I’m already driving the minimum,” said Dennis Zygnowicz, 51, of Garden City, Mich., who recently stopped at a Shell station and paid about $12 to put less than four gallons in his GMC Jimmy. “The only way I could do any less would be to ride a bike.”

They don't make the Jimmy anymore. It got well under 15 mpg in the city.

But come to think of it, Dennis, I think I'll drive the Colnago today.