Drew Thornley runs the numbers on ethanol for the Mackinac Center.

U.S. ethanol facilities produced 19,545 million barrels of ethanol in January 2009. Additionally, the United States imported 371,000 barrels of ethanol during the month of January, all of which arrived from non-OPEC countries (209,000 barrels from Trinidad and Tobago alone).

Meanwhile, government mandates for the use of renewable fuels are set to grow well beyond the January 2009 production pace of a quarter-billion barrels annually:

The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 increased the annual amount of renewable fuels (including ethanol) that must be blended into the nation’s gasoline supply. The 2009 corn-ethanol mandate of 10.5 billion gallons is set to increase to 15 billion gallons in 2015. In 2022, the total mandate for all renewable fuels (including ethanol) is 36 billion gallons.

Read the rest here.

Editor’s note: This item has been amended since its initial posting.