The Morning Feedstock

The House and Senate voted separately yesterday to halt daily shipments to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The reserve was created in 1973 in the aftermath of the OPEC embargo, and stocks today stand at close to 727 million barrels. Estimates of the effects the removal of 70,000 barrels per day moving into the reserve will have on gas prices are varied. Energy analyst Kevin Book doesn’t think it will have that much of an effect, saying “70,000 barrels is a rounding error. It is not material in an 85.7 million barrel per day market.” He echoed a U.S. Energy Information Administration report saying the reduction would cut four or five cents from the price of a gallon of gas. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was more hopeful, saying the gas prices would drop $0.24 per gallon.

But enough about Nancy. How did the markets respond? “In the hour after the Senate passed the measure nearly unanimously the price of crude jumped by a dollar.” Right. Time to try a little harder.

FloDesign, a wind startup from Wilbraham, MA has won the MIT Clean Energy Entrepreneurship Prize. The company, which is developing a “shrouded” wind turbine (that may look something like this, though details are sparse), picked up $200,000 at the ceremony last night, adding to the $50,000 it picked up on Monday from winning the Ignite Clean Energy Competition, and a $500,000 convertible loan it received from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative. Other winners included Covalent Solar, an MIT startup that recently won the Energy Track at the MIT 100K. More than 90 teams entered the first round of the MIT CEEP, while 40 teams entered the first round at ICE. So, you know, that’s where all the entrepreneurs are hiding. Just in case you were looking.

Greentech is a line-blurring industry. But, unlike the manbearpig, it’s not something we should be terribly afraid of. Unlike that weird exhaust that comes out of the Genzyme building in Kendall Square. Genomatica, a chemistry startup founded by chemists from Dow, has raised $20.4 million in a B round. The company is developing custom-made organisms capable of making chemicals at a reduced energy intensity and with less polluting inputs and materials. Genomatica thinks it will be able to use a variety of feedstocks, ranging from carbon dioxide to plant matter to syngas, to clean up the process of manufacturing chemicals.