Energy Bill Drops
Requirement for Smog-Reducing Gasoline Additives
August 09, 2005 — By John Heilprin, Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Additives in about a
third of the nation's gasoline -- aimed at reducing smog in urban areas
with the worst air pollution -- will no longer be required under the
energy policy that President Bush just signed into law.
Virtually everyone says the requirement that gasoline be formulated to
contain at least 2 percent oxygen by weight isn't needed anymore. Some
say it never was.
The most commonly used substances for adding oxygen to gasoline are
methyl tertiary butyl ether, known as MTBE, and ethanol derived from
corn. Several states, including California and New York, have banned
MTBE after it seeped into local water supplies, and other states are
phasing it out.
Congress in 1990 rewrote the Clean Air Act to establish the oxygen
standard after experts said it was the best and quickest way to cut
pollution from automobiles and trucks. With it, gasoline burns more
efficiently, removing pollutants like carbon monoxide from incomplete
combustion.
Since then, refiners have developed different blends of gasoline without
the oxygen that burn just as cleanly.
"It is clear that people have learned a lot in the last 15 years about
how to get that 2 percent benefit another way," said Jeff Holmstead, the
Environmental Protection Agency's top air quality official.
The change in law takes immediate effect in California, from Sacramento
to San Diego. It goes into effect nine months later in the East Coast,
from Boston to Norfolk, Va.; in Chicago, St. Louis and other Midwest
cities; and around Dallas, Houston and Atlanta.
Health advocates, oil industry representatives and government officials
dispute how much the oxygenates were ever needed. But they agree that
dropping it will help reduce the problem of groundwater pollution caused
by widespread use of MTBE.
"It's sort of a success story. ... We anticipate we'll get approximately
the same air quality benefits and not have the MTBE problem," said A.
Blakeman Early, an environmental consultant to the American Lung
Association. "It shows the adaptability of the refining industry. You
can say we want cleaner gasoline, and they'll produce it."
Early said ethanol and MTBE could effectively be replaced with other
additives such as alkylates -- synthetic oils -- and isooctanes --
high-octane gasolines.
Oil industry representatives also cite better engines from the auto
industry. Oxygen sensors used in vehicles built since 1994, a year
before the oxygenate requirement went into effect, can effectively
adjust the air-to-fuel ratio to achieve the same cleaner burn, they
said.
The energy bill Bush signed Monday still calls for refiners to double
their annual use of ethanol to 7.5 billion gallons by 2012, but the case
for that is more political -- nurturing a new market for Midwestern corn
growers -- than environmental.
"The environmental rationale has been eliminated," Ed Murphy of the
American Petroleum Institute said of the oxygenate requirement. "It's
outlived its usefulness and no longer needs to exist, and is causing
difficulty in the fuels market."
States where the change will occur after 270 days, according to the EPA,
are Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana,
Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and
Wisconsin. The change also will take place in the District of Columbia.
States that had voluntarily turned to oxygenated gasoline in the belief
it would also help reduce their pollution include Kentucky,
Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire and Rhode Island.
Source: Associated Press |