Time to Start the Engines : Auto fuel: The oil companies fight methanol because they want us to stay hooked on gasoline and their oligopoly.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s tanks may deliver clean air to California. Since the mid-1970s, the state Energy Commission has worked to provide the means to diversify energy sources for the California economy. Concern for lessening reliance on Middle East oil languished during the oil glut of the 1980s, but the commission’s work continued for another important reason: cleaning up our air. Aided by the South Coast Air Quality Management District and the state Air Resources Board, revolutionary proposals were advanced to phase out dirty gasoline and make Los Angeles as liveable as Seattle.

Even before Iraq’s aggression put energy security on the front page of world concern, the board had scheduled a Sept. 27 vote on a far-reaching proposal that would start California on the road to cleaner air and security from Mideast havoc. If the plan passes, 300 to 400 gas stations, principally concentrated in the Los Angeles region--which has 5% of the nation’s automobiles--would be required to make alternative fuels available by 1996.

The principal strategy involves methanol. Because of technological advances, we are no longer in the same situation as during the oil-crisis years of 1974 and 1979. Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. have developed automobiles that use computer sensors in the fuel line to permit the engine to run on either methanol or gasoline at a cost of $150 to $300 per vehicle. The development of a methanol market would significantly reduce control of world energy prices by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The flexible-fuel vehicles allow us to start on a new fuel while still using the old.

By lobbying state agencies and legislators and threatening litigation, the oil companies are fighting to ward off a methanol market. They offer instead reformulated gasoline, which offers fewer environmental benefits than methanol and does nothing to diversify energy sources. The oil industry has bitterly attacked methanol to halt its progress at the federal and state level. Yet the authors of a voluminous study commissioned by the state Legislature, including three oil-company representatives, recently concurred that the costs of methanol’s environmental and strategic benefits are reasonable.

Introducing methanol, however, will be only a first step. Air-quality plans call for development of other fuels and new vehicle technologies. The oil industry wants to halt all progress to preserve its oligopolistic lock on transportation fuels. It knows that producers of compressed natural gas, hydrogen and electric vehicles, will take the development of a methanol market as a sign that government is serious about real competition in what has been a closed domain.

The oil companies’ crowning effrontery is that, having hooked us on a bad fuel, they cannot even ensure its delivery. Yet they have the audacity to lobby against readily available alternatives. The state already operates 800 methanol-fueled vehicles that run on ordinary gasoline when they stray too far from a methanol pump. Another 5,000 cars are on order.

The Air Resources Board proposal is, in fact, conservative. Hussein’s tanks and popular attention on the energy issue offer the political impetus to go further, faster: more gas stations can be equipped, introduction dates can be moved up. The technology is on the shelf to make a durable change on demand and supply in the world energy market.

The intense lobbying of the oil industry must be counteracted. The industry wants to pass off reformulated gasoline as “clean” when it is in fact the oil equivalent of a low-tar cigarette: a device to keep us hooked when it is better to quit. Reformulated gasoline is the route of more lines at gas stations, more oil spills, more ruptured tankers, more empty promises for cleaner air, more inaction on the greenhouse effect.

However, we can express the need to get going with the better, cleaner, more reliable alternatives in an easy way: The AQMD maintains a 24-hour phone number, 1-800-CUT SMOG, for reporting smoking autos. Call and say you want to report the oil companies for making every car in sight run on dirty fuel and for fostering energy dependency.

Tell them you support efforts to bring in new fuels. Your message will reach the people who need to hear it.