Tosco Urges End to Use of Gas Additive

Tosco Corp. is urging the state Air Resources Board to move quickly toward eliminating a smog-reducing gasoline additive because of concerns it could cause widespread contamination of drinking water supplies. The plea by Tosco to stop oil industry usage of methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE, could rock an industry that has invested billions in formulating fuel with the additive to make a federally required “cleaner-burning gasoline.” It is a sharp departure from petroleum marketers in the Western U.S. who have steadfastly defended the oxygenate as a key ingredient in reducing tailpipe emissions. Stamford, Conn.-based Tosco, which became the nation’s largest independent refiner with its purchase of Unocal Corp.’s refineries and gas stations earlier this year, made its concerns known in an Oct. 17 letter to the ARB, the Sacramento Bee reported. “The state should take decisive action immediately to begin to move away from MTBE,” Duane B. Bordvick, a Tosco vice president, said in a letter to air board Chairman John Dunlap. Controversy has swirled around MTBE ever since Congress mandated in 1990 that oil companies put air-cleaning chemicals in gasoline to reduce carbon monoxide and smog in America’s largest urban centers.