Delay ban on MTBE, report advises :Additive restriction could spike prices (California )

Bingo! You posted, This is garbage and probably payback from Davis to California refiners and gasoline distributors. California RFG (what DG calls a boutique formulation) inhibits refiners from out of state selling their product in California. It also consumes a great deal of natural gas to produce. Getting rid of RFG would reduce the price of electricity by making more natural gas available for power generation without constructing new pipeline capacity. It would make more gasoline from out of state sources available and thus LOWER gasoline prices in California, which have been among the highest in the nation for nearly a decade.

Thirteen states use the additive to meet requirements of the federal Clean Air Act.

Isn't that in the Cheney / Bush Energy plan?

Zooming up to the 30,000 foot level, so we can get the big picture...For EPA to allow states to enforce the Clean Air Act requirements the states must submit a State Implementation Plan (SIP) to EPA for review and approval that shows how the state will do things to insure compliance with the Clean Air Act air quality standards.

California and some other states have winter air quality problems. To meet those problems they descided to add an oxygenating agent to the winter gasoline to help reduce air pollution concentrations from cars. The State of California choose to add MTBE for a variety of reasons.

Good citizens should be asking if the State of California is opening up its entire SIP to re-examination and revision or if it is just trying to tinker with one element. People should also clearly point out that this is a state imposed problem and has nothing to do with Washington DC. If there is an MTBE crisis, it should be put at the feet of Gov Davis and no one else. Looks alike a good issue for California Republicans this election season.

One of the enviro whackos up here was claiming that without MTBE in our gasoline, we wouldn't have enough oil to meet our demands. (I can't remember the ratio, but at least 10% of each Kali gasoline gallon at our pumps is MTBE).

Of course the addition of this percentage of MTBE drops the mileage per gallon by at least 10%. So it would be an even wash just to remove the expensive MTBE.

Then, like you said we could use gas from Nevada, Arizona, Oregon or Washington without the MTBE.

When I mentioned the loss of mileage due to the MTBE addition and the removal of it would bring back the mileage the whacko just looked at me. He refused to comment on the loss of mileage with the addition of MTBE to our gasoline.

Whenever I fish the Upper Russian River, I buy gas from a station without MTBE. The mileage on my Bronco on the road goes from about 15 to 17+mpg or a 13.33% increase in mpg due to no MTBE in the gasoline. Whenever, I drive to Brookings from here I can barely make it into Brookings to buy gasoline on a single tank of gasoline. When I feel up in Brookings (no MTBE), Or. and drive home, I arrive home with over a quarter of tank of gas left in my Bronco on that fillup in Oregon.

This whole additive thing is a farce. One of the best auto/tuners in town told us that most Japanese cars/trucks since the early 1990's need zero additives to meet the epa stamdards re clean air. Then American autos since 1994 need zero additives to meet the clean air standards.

Last but not least, the energy demands to blend and stabilize the mtbe as you pointed out is very high.

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