U.S. Auto Makers Ask Oil Firms to Join Study of Clean-Burning Fuels
The Big Three auto makers have sent a letter to major oil companies with details of a proposed joint industry research project intended to assess the clean-air merits of gasoline and alternative fuels, industry officials confirmed Monday.
The letter, signed by executives of General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Corp., was sent to oil company representatives within the last two weeks and contained details of a research program to be undertaken by a joint industry task force, said Helen O. Petrauskas, Ford vice president for environmental and safety engineering in Dearborn, Mich.
The letter grew out of a series of meetings among top executives and lower-level officials of several oil companies and auto makers on ways to deal with impending federal clean-air proposals that could mandate the use of alternative fuels such as methanol.
Auto and oil executives, wary of mandates that would require costly wholesale changes in their industries, have argued that improved gasoline should be studied along with methanol, compressed natural gas and other fuels as a way to reduce emissions.
Meeting in July
“The letter was indeed received by the oil companies,” said Arthur H. Bentley, a spokesman for Unocal Corp., one of the oil companies involved in joint industry talks. “There will be a meeting (perhaps) later this week of an oil industry working group at lower levels to kick it around . . . to go over the proposal and see if they can agree with it. If they can, it could be as early as the middle of next week when the CEOs or their designates get together somewhere . . . for final approval.”
Top executives of the three auto makers last met July 20 in Detroit with leaders of Atlantic Richfield Co., Amoco Corp., Shell Oil Co., Texaco Inc. and Chevron Corp. Lower-level officials of those and other companies have since met to hammer out the project’s details.
“We’ve had ongoing discussions with them for some time, and correspondence at all levels, related to what kind of research might make sense for us to do jointly, as opposed to separately,” Petrauskas said.
Made Much Progress
For their part, the three auto makers have “a pretty good idea” what shape that research should take, she added. Among other things, they favor assessing the relative air quality benefits of specific fuels and vehicles taken as a single system, she said.
“It would not be unfair to my colleagues to say that we’ve made a lot of progress since August,” she said.
Officials of both auto and oil industries vehemently denied a report in the trade weekly Automotive News suggesting that the joint industry talks were intended to quash methanol or other alternative fuels in favor of gasoline.
“It’s inaccurate to imply, as that story does, that the petroleum industry is trying to kill methanol as a motor fuel,” said Arthur E. Wiese, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, the main industry trade group. “We’re not opposed to methanol per se; we’re opposed to mandating it as long as there are so many unanswered environmental, technological and economic questions about it.”
