SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the ‘Open Fuel Standard Act of 2009’ or the ‘OFS Act’.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS AND PURPOSES.

(a) Findings- Congress makes the following findings:

(1) The status of oil as a strategic commodity, which derives from its domination of the transportation sector, presents a clear and present danger to the United States;

(2) in a prior era, when salt was a strategic commodity, salt mines conferred national power and wars were fought over the control of such mines;

(3) technology, in the form of electricity and refrigeration, decisively ended salt’s monopoly of meat preservation and greatly reduced its strategic importance;

(4) fuel competition and consumer choice would similarly serve to end oil’s monopoly in the transportation sector and strip oil of its strategic status;

(5) the current closed fuel market has allowed a cartel of petroleum exporting countries to inflate fuel prices, effectively imposing a harmful tax on the economy of the United States;

(6) much of the inflated petroleum revenues the oil cartel earns at the expense of the people of the United States are used for purposes antithetical to the interests of the United States and its allies;

(7) alcohol fuels, including ethanol and methanol, could potentially provide significant supplies of additional fuels that could be produced in the United States and in many other countries in the Western Hemisphere that are friendly to the United States;

(8) alcohol fuels can only play a major role in securing the energy independence of the United States if a substantial portion of vehicles in the United States are capable of operating on such fuels;

(9) it is not in the best interest of United States consumers or the United States Government to be constrained to depend solely upon petroleum resources for vehicle fuels if alcohol fuels are potentially available;

(10) existing technology, in the form of flexible fuel vehicles, allows internal combustion engine cars and trucks to be produced at little or no additional cost, which are capable of operating on conventional gasoline, alcohol fuels, or any combination of such fuels, as availability or cost advantage dictates, providing a platform on which fuels can compete;

(11) the necessary distribution system for such alcohol fuels will not be developed in the United States until a substantial fraction of the vehicles in the United States are capable of operating on such fuels;

(12) the establishment of such a vehicle fleet and distribution system would provide a large market that would mobilize private resources to substantially advance the technology and expand the production of alcohol fuels in the United States and abroad;

(13) the United States has an urgent national security interest to develop alcohol fuels technology, production, and distribution systems as rapidly as possible;

(14) new cars sold in the United States that are equipped with an internal combustion engine should allow for fuel competition by being flexible fuel vehicles, and new diesel cars should be capable of operating on biodiesel; and

(15) such an open fuel standard would help to protect the United States economy from high and volatile oil prices and from the threats caused by global instability, terrorism, and natural disaster.

SEC. 3. OPEN FUEL STANDARD FOR TRANSPORTATION.

Chapter 329 of title 49, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following: