Auto and Oil Firms to Make Case for Keeping Gasoline : Environment: Using data from a 14-month study, they will try to show that gasoline can reduce smog as much as alternative fuels.

The automobile and oil industries are expected today to unveil new research data showing how new formulations of gasoline can reduce smog-forming auto emissions, as demonstrated in an unprecedented $14-million joint industry research project.

The 14-month project, believed to be the largest study of its kind, is part of a dual industry effort to demonstrate that gasoline can reduce smog as much as alternative fuels such as methanol, ethanol or compressed natural gas. Such alternative fuels, if mandated, would require costly wholesale changes in both industries.

“It shows that there are ways we can change gasoline to reduce emissions and how we can make those changes,” said Dixon Smith, general manager of strategic planning with Chevron U.S.A. and a member of the auto-oil industry task force.

Initial results from the study show that emissions from gasoline can be reduced by adding a so-called oxygenating compound or by lowering the temperature at which the fuel vaporizes, Smith said.

The study, sponsored by the Big Three auto makers and 14 major oil companies, also showed that reducing levels of another ingredient--olefins--reduces some emissions, but not others, he said. The results are also expected to show the effects of reducing so-called aromatics in gasoline.

What the study doesn’t show--at least not at this early stage--is the best combination of fuel and vehicle to achieve the maximum reduction of smog levels.

The results are to be unveiled today at joint news conferences in Washington and Los Angeles.

Industry critics said the study so far doesn’t reach any surprising new conclusions, though the study’s detail is expected to be impressive.

Industry officials said they are pleased with the test results so far.

The results to be unveiled today are based on tests of 16 different formulations of gasoline that were tested in two fleets of cars and light trucks: 20 1989-model vehicles, and 14 1983-to-1985 vehicles, Smith said.

All told, the first phase of the study will involve 2,200 tests of 53 types of new and old cars and light trucks using 29 different formulas of gasoline, including mixtures with ethanol and methanol, said Robert O’Rourke, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s main trade group.

The study’s second phase is to begin soon, and further results are expected early next year. Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp. and Chrysler Corp. all contributed vehicles to the study; major oil companies provided fuel and GM and Ford technicians are running tests at labs in Michigan.

The study’s initial results quantify how adding the oxygenate methyl tertiary butyl ether, which promotes more complete burning of gasoline, reduces emissions of so-called volatile organic compounds, precursors of ozone in smog, as well as carbon monoxide.

The study also showed that, in the case of some test gasolines, reducing the temperature at which gasoline vaporizes can significantly reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds in newer cars, Smith said.

The results are less conclusive in older cars, he added.

There’s also a question of how much emissions from existing gasolines can be improved by lowering the vaporization temperature, said Richard Rykowski, an Environmental Protection Agency official developing federal clean air regulations who was one of several officials briefed on the findings Monday.

Release of the first findings comes somewhat belatedly to influence debate over new federal or state clean air rules. The oil industry has long opposed efforts to write specific formulas for gasoline, arguing instead that emissions standards should be set for the industry to meet however it can.

The project has dragged on without results since it was announced in October, 1989. Since then, Congress has enacted a sweeping new Clean Air Act, and California regulators have devised stringent new vehicle emissions standards.

Still, officials say the data could be used in devising regulations to implement the vehicle fuel provisions of the Clean Air Act signed into law last month by President Bush, as well as to form the basis of future technical amendments to the act.

Critics of the oil industry suggest that the study is designed both to inundate regulators with data to impede the process of regulation, as well as to undermine specific fuel component requirements contained in the new law. Those include adding oxygen and reducing levels of benzene.

But Richard J. Stegemeier, chairman of Unocal Corp., a project sponsor, denied that the research was designed to hamper implementation of the Clean Air Act or to further a secret industry agenda.