If there’s anyone who doubts that higher gas prices will encourage people to adopt alternatives, consider this:

Used cooking oil stolen — by biodiesel pirates

SAN FRANCISCO – A few years ago, drums of used french fry grease were only of interest to a small network of underground biofuel brewers, who would use the slimy oil to power their souped-up antique Mercedes.

Now, restaurants from Berkeley, Calif., to Sedgwick, Kan., are reporting thefts of old cooking oil worth thousands of dollars by rustlers who are refining it into barrels of biofuel in backyard stills.

Who says we aren’t building more refineries? They’ve just been forced underground.

When gas was a $1.00 a gallon used cooking oil went to the dump. It just wasn’t worth the work of collecting it and processing it into diesel (or, alternatively, altering a diesel engine to run on cooking oil). Legitimate grease collectors are understandably upset about thievery, but it’s a sign that the stuff they’re collecting has real value now.

A possible answer to this problem is to start paying the restaurants for the amount of grease they provide. Once the cost of theft is pushed to the restaurants, they’ll keep the grease under lock-and-key until the collection truck comes by.

Used cooking oil is helping some individuals motor around, but it isn’t a national answer. We don’t eat that many french fries. We really do need to build some new commercial refineries and drill more domestically. But also, this story provides proof that as the price of crude rises the opportunity for a profitable alternative fuel industry opens up. Funding the expensive R&D for new battery technology suddenly looks sensible. As does exploring the possibility of algae biofuels.

- H/T Michael Sargent