Phase Out Anti-Smog Additive, Refiner Says
A major oil company, Tosco Corp., has called for the phasing out of a widely used smog-suppressing gasoline additive, MTBE, citing widespread evidence that it has contaminated lakes and underground supplies of drinking water.
The additive emerged as something of a double-edged sword in the fight against pollution after leaks from gas station storage tanks forced Santa Monica to shut down a portion of its water supply last year and undertake an expensive cleanup.
In a recent letter to the California Air Resources Board, Tosco’s vice president for environmental affairs, Duane B. Bordvick, urged support of legislative efforts in Sacramento and Washington to ease regulations on the use of oxygenates in gasoline that, according to Bordvick, all but mandate employing MTBE.
Oxygenates such as MTBE are additives that boost the content of oxygen in gasoline. First used to increase octane and later to help reduce smog, MTBE is by far the most widely employed oxygenate in gasoline sold in California, constituting about 11% of the total volume of gas here.
Tosco, along with the Western States Petroleum Assn., the industry’s lobbying arm, argues that it can make clean-burning gas without using so much oxygenate. But it says it is constrained by a requirement that at least 2% of the weight of its gas be oxygen.
“It is now apparent that the issue of potential contamination of the state’s water was not adequately considered prior to implementation of the federal and state reformulated gasoline regulations,” Bordvick wrote. “Consequently, we find ourselves in a Catch-22, since the current regulatory framework effectively leaves us no choice but to use MTBE to meet clean fuel standards.”
Bordvick said Tosco wants “regulatory changes which could be made to allow greater use of other oxygenates [such as ethanol] or the use of no oxygenates.”
As one of the largest refiners and marketers of gasoline in California, Tosco, which took over Unocal’s West Coast operations this year, would be well positioned to produce and sell alternatives to MTBE if that was permitted, according to industry sources.
But Ned Griffith, vice chairman of the Oxygenated Fuels Assn., took issue with Tosco’s position on MTBE.
“We’re disappointed, and we don’t agree,” he said. “We don’t think there is a need for precipitous action. As presently constituted, cleaner-burning fuel is working very well in California, and MTBE is an important constituent. There is some water contamination, but it is somewhat limited.”
Griffith is a government relations manager for Arco Chemical Co., a subsidiary of Arco and a major MTBE producer.
Regarded as a possible human carcinogen, MTBE has shown up in small amounts--that the California Water Quality Control Board says have not posed health problems--in a number of the state’s lakes and reservoirs, including Lake Tahoe.
The additive is one of several components of reformulated gas sold in California that, according to the Air Resources Board, has done more to reduce smog than any other pollution control technology, including the catalytic converter.
John Dunlap, chairman of the air board, has scheduled a meeting with Tosco officials for early next month to discuss the issue.
