As the Obama administration begins laying out its view of the energy future for the United States, industry groups should step up and speak against policy prescriptions that are not market-based and particularly those that will not help to achieve the country’s energy security goals, according to an industry executive.

Joe Petrowski, chief executive of Massachusetts-based Gulf Oil and Cumberland Farms, argued during an ethanol conference last week for market-based solutions to the country’s energy problems, and criticized efforts by Congress and the Obama administration to limit domestic drilling of oil and natural gas.

But he offered full support for biofuels, saying ethanol was going to play an important part as a transportation fuel in the future. He said ethanol would be one of the many energy sources, which would still include oil and natural gas.

An ethanol industry under pressure is expected to rebound along with crude oil and gasoline prices after the recession eases later this year, an economist predicted last week.

Making his comments during a presentation at the Renewable Fuels Association’s 14th annual ethanol conference in San Antonio, Texas, on Feb. 25, John Urbanchuk, a director with consulting firm LEGC, LLC, said his economic model showed a sharp improvement for the ethanol industry later in 2009 as the recession nears an end as he expects. Last year, the ethanol industry was hit hard by the recession which officially started in the United States in December 2007.

Hammered in 2008 by bad publicity via the food-for-fuel debate, a petition to scale back mandated demand under the Renewable Fuels Standard, floods in Midwest corn fields and volatile commodity markets including record high feedstock costs, the recession only made the situation worse for the industry which had used cheap credit to expand supply capacity beyond demand. When credit dried up and the commodity boom went bust, the ethanol industry was left in a lurch, he said.