American Ethanol's race boat reclaims Lake of the Ozarks Shootout top spot on Day 2
Don Onken's American Ethanol team put its black-and-yellow Mystic catamaran back on top at the 2026 Lake of the Ozarks Shootout on Day 2, the corn ethanol industry's loudest consumer-facing moment of the year. In the week before the event the crew posted a test video of the boat running 176 mph on its new quad QSC quad-cam ProCharged engines, and it showed up running clean instead of thrashing to make the start line the way it has in recent years.
This is a marketing play, not a market mover. It matters because it is the ethanol lobby buying eyeballs at a Missouri race the same stretch of summer the E15 and Reid vapor pressure fights grind on in Washington. A boat at 176 mph on ethanol is the pitch. Whether it moves a single gallon of E15 at the pump is another question.
Beyond the Shootout, US biofuels news was quiet over the last 24 hours. The rest of the wire was foreign, and most of it does not touch a US jobber directly.
India pump labels
India's Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear a petition seeking mandatory disclosure of ethanol content on every fuel pump nozzle and on purchase invoices. The bench sent advocate Narendra Kumar Goswami to the state high court, and the government's attorney general called it proxy litigation since a similar plea was already tossed.
For a US operator this is background, not action. India is running E20 and pulling in a lot of ethanol demand, so how open its market stays on blends and disclosure feeds the global corn and sugar balance US growers sell into. The pump-label fight itself is India's domestic problem.
Feed costs
The same India story has a US echo worth noting. Maize diverted to ethanol is pushing feed costs up and squeezing poultry operators there, the old food-versus-fuel tension that shows up wherever a mandate ramps faster than the crop. US corn ethanol has lived this fight for two decades. It is a reminder of where the political ceiling on blending usually sits.
Belgium biodiesel
Dutch supplier Sunoil Biodiesel got approval to sell into Belgium, another European market added to its list. No US read-through here beyond it being one more sign European biodiesel supply is spreading.
Closer to home, Chattanooga pump prices rose nearly 11 cents a gallon over the past week, and forecasters tie continued September pressure to global conflict risk.
What to watch
Whether EPA moves on RVP or E15 while the ethanol industry runs its summer marketing. Whether India's blending appetite holds and keeps a floor under US corn demand. And whether that 11-cent weekly jump in the Southeast is a blip or the start of a September grind higher.