Grain Transportation Report, May 5, 2022
Bibliographic record
Abstract
After showing strong growth from first to second quarter 2021, U.S. ethanol production fell 2 percent to 3.7 billion gallons, from the second to third quarter.Exports to major buyers of U.S. ethanol also fell from the second to third quarter.However, both production and exports of ethanol rebounded from the third to fourth quarter, largely driven by rising fuel demand.For the third and fourth quarters of 2021, this article examines trends in ethanol production and exports, their effects on demand for transporting ethanol, and what lies in store for future transportation demand. Ethanol Production and Rail MovementsBecause of high corn prices, limited feedstock availability, and shrinking margins, ethanol plants were forced to temporarily reduce their operating capacity, from second to third quarter 2021.Reflecting low thirdquarter production, Class I rail movements of ethanol fell 3 percent, from 85,282 carloads in second quarter 2021 to 83,026 carloads in the third quarter.Thirdquarter 2021 carloads were 1 percent below the same time the previous year.However, high ethanol prices, strong ethanol margins, and rising fuel demand all supported higher fourth-quarter ethanol production. 1 As a result, ethanol production rose to 4.1 million gallons-10 percent above the third quarter and 3 percent over the prior-5-year average.At the same time, despite worsening rail service beginning in the fourth quarter, rail shipments of ethanol rose to 89,585 carloads-8 percent above the third quarter, 11 percent higher than fourth quarter 2020 (fig.1), and 3 percent above the 5-year average. 2 Ethanol Export Trends and Effects on Port ActivityFluctuating demand for U.S. ethanol transportation in 2021 echoed the demand for U.S. ethanol by major importing countries. 3 According to Foreign Agricultural Service data, ethanol exports fell 27 percent from second to third quarter 2021, mainly because of much lower purchases from Brazil, India, and China.Then, from third to fourth quarter 2021-mainly because of higher exports to India and Brazil-ethanol exports rose 79 percent to over 372 million gallons.This was 8 percent above fourth quarter 2020 and 1 percent below the 5-year average.Top and emerging ethanol importers.Together, Canada, Brazil, and India accounted for 55 percent of fourth-quarter U.S. ethanol exports.Top 2021 importers of U.S. ethanol were Canada, India, and South Korea.Meanwhile, the United Kingdom (UK) emerged as a major importer, as it moved to adopt a 10-percent ethanol "E10" blend of gasoline.Brazil remained a key importer in 2021-despite recent fluctuations in Brazilian demand following the end of its tariff-free imports of U.S. ethanol in December 2020.Following very low imports of U.S. ethanol in third quarter 2021 (just over 1,700 gallons), Brazil's fourth-quarter imports rose sharply, to over 45 million gallons.Exports to Canada were consistently strong, accounting for 48 percent of total U.S ethanol exports in the third quarter and 30 percent in the fourth quarter.India, too, has emerged as a top importer of U.S. ethanol since setting an "E20" goal for its biofuel in 2018.Strong domestic inventories and high U.S. ethanol prices reduced India's ethanol imports, from almost 24 million gallons, in second quarter 2021, to just over 33,000 gallons in the third quarter. 4U.S. ethanol exports to India rose sharply in the fourth quarter, to almost 50 million gallons after industrial activity resumed following pandemic lockdowns.Market shakeups.Although U.S. ethanol exports to India and Brazil did recover from third to fourth quarter, demand did not rally from all buyers.Though not historically a major ethanol buyer, China had stronger-than-typical purchases of U.S. ethanol in the first half of 2021, before halting its purchases entirely after June 2021 (Grain Transportation Report (GTR), September 30, 2021).Similarly, after strong imports in second quarter 2021, South Korea's imports dropped 31 percent in the third quarter and fell 5 percent 1 Strong margins for ethanol were due to declining corn prices (because of newly harvested corn entering the market) and strong gasoline prices. 2 For example, according to the Surface Transportation Board's rail service metrics, origin dwell times for ethanol trains increased from about 9 hours (on average)-in late September and early October 2021-to 28 hours, in late November.3 "Ethanol transportation" refers to transportation used to convey ethanol-not transportation powered by ethanol. 4 Indian inventories had built up during Covid-19 restrictions, and industrial activity had yet to return to pre-pandemic levels.So, there was little interest from buyers to buy U.S. ethanol at high prices.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".