In retrospect, it seems to have been inevitable. Someone got a headache after refueling an automobile with reformulated gasoline and blamed it on a new fuel additive. Questions about methyl tertiary butyl ether appeared in newspapers and on television. Public acceptance of the oxygenate began a long slide that approached bottom last week.
On advice of an advisory group, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner recommended that MTBE use in gasoline be cut nationwide. The reason is not that MTBE causes health problems, although EPA earlier mentioned a study implicating the substance in the growth of tumors in laboratory animals. The main problem is that MTBE readily invades groundwater and smells bad.
Containment failure
That MTBE has appeared in alarming numbers of water supplies-nearly always in harmless trace amounts-should indict containment systems, not the substance. The advisory group and EPA nevertheless will follow California`s lead in preparing to slash MTBE concentrations in gasoline. Given public aversion toward MTBE and farm-state support for the alternative, ethanol, Congress will surely go along.
The move will jolt MTBE producers, many of which won`t survive. And it will complicate business for refiners. It need not, however, compromise air quality.
Refiners can make fuel able to meet federal standards for ozone precursors without adding oxygen. For reformulated gasoline, they use MTBE or ethanol mainly to boost octane and to meet a 2 wt % requirement for oxygen content. The oxygenates provide secondary environmental benefits, such as reducing formation of carbon monoxide and backing out octane boosters more threatening to health. But they detract from the aim of gasoline reformulation-fighting ozone smog-more than they help. They do produce direct air quality benefits in a separate and smaller program addressing wintertime formation of carbon monoxide.
Official concern about the environment should account for the health of the U.S. refining industry, which developed the fuels that have so greatly improved U.S. air quality over the past decade. That the industry supplies most of the country`s oil products should be no less a matter of national interest.
U.S. refiners face a full slate of potentially fateful challenges. MTBE`s jeopardy arises as the gasoline reformulation program enters a new, stricter phase. Separately, EPA in May opted for the strictest, fastest, and broadest route under discussion to reductions in gasoline sulfur content. And the agency is still considering appeal of a court reversal to its proposal to tighten air quality standards for ozone and small particles, which would add greatly to demand for reformulated gasoline.
To meet these challenges, refiners must make heavy and immediate investments that will yield no profit. So, although an MTBE cutback by itself won`t close refineries, it adds to a heavy load. For refiners wondering whether to make investments required by environmental regulation to keep low-margin plants in operation, the new need to make an oxygenate adjustment could be decisive.
Easing the blow
To prevent the setback to U.S. processing capacity that would come with a series of refinery closures:
- Congress should repeal the mandate for oxygen in reformulated gasoline. Refiners would benefit from the new flexibility, and air quality wouldn`t suffer.
- EPA should moderate its program to reduce sulfur in gasoline. There is no strong environmental reason to impose the strictest possible requirement on the shortest possible schedule or to apply the requirement nationwide.
- EPA should drop its appeal of the court decision against its unwarranted toughening of standards for ozone and fine particles.
It serves no national interest to continually jeopardize the refining industry with crisis environmental regulation when no crisis exists. It serves the environment least of all.
