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Saturday, March 05, 2005

BIOWILLIE - Of All The Fuels I've Known Before

Have you got "BioWillie" in your tank?

I'm talking about a clean-burning alternative fuel that Willie Nelson is helping to market through a new company called Willie Nelson Biodiesel. What is it? It's essentially vegetable oil, mainly soybean oil, though the used frying oil from Dunkin Donuts or Sid's Greasy Spoon also works.

ExxonMobil and the like don't want you knowing this, but if you take veggie oil and process it slightly to remove the glycerin (which, by the way, is what soap is made of) – you have a ready-to-go fuel for diesel engines. Whether you have a diesel pickup truck or a Mercedes, it'll run on this stripped down veggie oil without requiring any modification to the engine. Just tank up and go!

Willie has been tanking up his tour buses with it for some time. There's nothing new or complicated about the concept – French inventor Rudolf Diesel's original engines ran on vegetable oils.

So Nelson and partners are going back to the future, working with truck stops and convenience store chains to market the veggie-based fuel under the BioWillie brand. The fuel's average price is $1.79 a gallon, and while the major concentration of biodiesel pumps is in the Midwest, Nelson hopes to spread it from sea to shining sea.

Exxon tells us to put a tiger in our tanks, but BioWillie gives us a bigger bang for the buck. Not only do you get a fuel that is better for your engine at a competitive price, but biodiesel also is much better for the environment, it can be an economic boon for America's family farmers, and your exhaust fumes can smell like donuts! Oh, and Willie notes that there's one more big plus – we can put "farmers back on the land growing fuel and keep us from having to start wars for oil."

Rep. Denis Kucinich is preparing legislation to help develop of this new biodiesel industry for America. For information, call 202-225-5871.

Jim Hightower

"Willie Nelson Bets on Biodiesel," Wired, January 14, 2005, www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,66288,00.html.
"Willie Nelson puts name on clean-burning biodiesel," Austin American-Statesman, January 15, 2005.
"Now appearing on local stages: Willie Nelson and Austin Biofuels," Austin Chronicle, January 20, 2005.

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