I'll post my two cents here and then leave you all to it.
The biggest motivation for this change is economical. Towns with only a handful of resources that can't possibly survive need a stimulus to give them that chance. Oil is one such stimulus that frankly is not being exploited to it's maximum. It is a novelty resource. Currently, the only true reason to get it is to build roads which will only truly benefit those with a car. The average character doesn't have a car because the average player has the attention span of a kitten..........ooh! A butterfly!
Anyway. So, the idea is to implement fuel as a ecomony booster, a way to make those few locations with oil that much more important and so we can finally make the Sociologists' characters rich and happy so he won't have to delete them because they can't kill a pigeon with one punch...but I digress again.
So now everybody freaks out because the proverbial dung has hit the fan. Our vehicles will be useless if we could even afford them to begin with, we're all going to die, if cantr had children then women and children would be first to the life boats, let's hit the big X now. I think there is a 20-something page thread plus five clones about the gathering limits to illustrate my point, and at the end of the day......cantr is alive and well and thriving, despite the best efforts of the staff to kill it all. (And a few of those naysayers are now pointing out that it was indeed a great idea and the game is better off for it because it actually resluted in better organization and a demand for exploration/expansion.
)
So what is my point? The blithering idiots in the Resource Department are working to ensure that this is going to be as balanced as it can be before it sees the light of day (if it ever actually does). This isn't going to be like tiredness - which wasn't actually completely broken, but enough people pissed and moaned until it was taken away to placate the masses.
The big effort now is to balance the average rate of fuel consumption against the rate at which it can be produced. In other words, if two towns are to be supplying oil for an entire continenet, we are going to try and make sure you don't get to spend a day making fuel to drive to the next town. We are trying to make sure that day of work can last one vehicle a sufficient amount of time, so that a few oil towns will be able to meet the demand. Supply and demand.
As for ethanol, biofuels, und so weiter....yes, they will be a very important part of this economic balance. We all know that long distance trade is rare, wether it be because the roads are too slow, or the resources are poorly distributed, or wether players are content sitting where carrots grow freely and they can frolic and roleplay in a loin cloth, bone knife utopia....so we need to do something to cusion the blow. Alternatives will be and should be less efficient, but they won't be crap. Vehicles should still be able to run without an incredible amount of time or effort (especially if an industry happens to spring up, which isn't bloody likely, but one can hope) and the game will continue and we will love it.
The admitted trick will be getting it tweaked just right so that gasoline will still be advantageous and desireable over ethanol, but there is some error. We are trying to fit an equation with about 9000 unknowns using a dozen variables....that takes work.
End of my two cents. Continue on with your own rant.
"Y-O-U! It's just two extra letters! Come on, people! This is the internet, not a barn!" --Kid President
I doubt the MacGregor's allies of the "Mid-North Council" will be too pleased...but whoever was concerned about what silly places like "Drojf" thought of us? 
