Congress is growing restless because gasoline prices are climbing weeks before summer driving season arrives as refiners replace methyl tertiary butyl ether with ethanol as a gasoline additive.
The US average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline climbed 9¢ to $2.588 week-to-week, 37.1¢ more than a year earlier, the US Energy Information Administration said Apr. 3.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who argued strongly for refiners to stop using MTBE as a gasoline additive, now says that repealing oxygenate requirements does not justify reviving proposals for MTBE liability limits.
“The Clean Air Act never required the use of MTBE, and courts have upheld that view,” said Boxer in a Mar. 29 letter to National Petrochemical & Refiners Association Pres. Bob Slaughter.
She was responding to testimony that Slaughter and NPRA submitted to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that day on the impact of refiners no longer using MTBE.
Several refiners individually decided to replace the additive with ethanol because oxygenate requirements mandating MTBE’s use are due to expire May 1, and refiners were unable to secure the liability limits they wanted, Slaughter said.
Boxer countered that the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 never required MTBE’s use.
“Moreover, in response to direct questioning today, Robert Meyers, associate assistant administrator in the Office of Air and Radiation at the US Environmental Protection Agency, again affirmed that MTBE use was not required by the Clean Air Act,” she said.
Boxer said that Meyers expressed this view in 1995, when he was counsel to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. At that time, she said, he wrote that fuel neutrality was a major aspect in the debate on the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments.
Tried to be neutral
Efforts were made to avoid dictating a particular fuel choice in 1990 because various fuels and components were competing for the alternative and reformulated gasoline market, she quoted Meyers as saying.
Repeal of the oxygenate standard does not justify reconsidering MTBE liability limits, Boxer said. “I oppose such legislation now, just as I did during consideration of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and will be actively engaged in opposing it should it be reintroduced this session,” she said.
While Slaughter suggested that the absence of MTBE liability limits may be one of several factors prompting refiners to switch to ethanol, he has not indicated that NPRA intends to revive the MTBE liability limit proposal.
Another oil industry association, in fact, told the committee that the transition should proceed without government interference.
“Market mechanisms are most effective in providing companies with appropriate indicators and in ensuring a rapid response to changes in market conditions or transitional problems that may occur,” said the American Petroleum Institute in a statement submitted for the record Mar. 29.
“Changes to these market indicators by government, such as calling for waivers from clean fuel regulations in light of concerns about possible volatility in fuel prices, will only cause market uncertainty and send confusing information to markets in transition,” API continued. “There are already mechanisms in place to deal with true market supply disruptions, and we urge the government to use appropriate caution in exercising this existing authority,” it added.✦
