Texaco Inc.'s chief executive officer has urged legislators to seize the opportunity to influence choices their states are required to make in implementing the U.S. 1990 Clean Air Act (CAA) amendments.
Speaking before the annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council, Texaco Pres. James W. Kinnear said, "The American people need someone in their corner to prevent imposition of costly, unnecessary programs and help strike an affordable balance between environmental needs and affordable energy."
CAA amendments require specific, phased reductions in exhaust emissions from cars and light trucks and for the first time cover the issue of gasoline reformulation as a way to control air quality.
Kinnear noted that tailpipe exhaust emissions from those vehicles will account for only 4% of all hydrocarbons in the air. He said the proposed cost of severely reformulated gasoline far outweighs the problem's size.
Under the amendments, beginning in 1995, only gasoline with a prescribed federal formula can be sold in nine metropolitan areas with high levels of atmospheric ozone.
STATE CHOICES
Beyond those severe nonattainment areas, Kinnear pointed out, states must choose one of three courses of action to meet the goals for hydrocarbon reduction. Their options are:
- Staying out of the federally mandated reformulated gasoline program except in the nine severe nonattainment areas.
- Opting for the federally specified formula in less severe nonattainment areas.
- Adopting much stricter California air quality standards for nonattainment areas.
It is the last option that poses what Kinnear called "the gravest threat to the public pocketbook."
He said, "Those standards were written to meet the unique, extreme air pollution problem of southern California.
"To deal with it, that state is looking at mandating, by 1996, fuels that are more radically reformulated than the federal formula fuels.
"Yet, a number of states, including Texas and most of those in the Northeast, are flirting with 'opting in' for the California gasolines."
Kinnear confirmed Texaco's agreement with the initial 1995 federal formula fuel, which has been the subject of negotiations by federal and state governments, industry and environmental groups. But he urged lawmakers to resist pressure to "opt in" to the California standards for severely reformulated fuels.
BETTER CHOICES, COSTS
On the basis of research conducted by a joint task force of 14 major oil companies and the Big Three U.S. automakers, Kinnear said, "in our view, there's a lot more promise in gasoline vapor pressure reduction and pollution control hardware."
For example, adding an extra canister to a car or installing the accordion shaped Stage 2 pump nozzles at gasoline retail outlets will reduce hydrocarbons released in the refueling process.
Lowering the vapor pressure lowers fuel volatility and reduces gasoline evaporation.
The cost of those measures, Kinnear said, ranges from $1,200 to $3,500/ton of reduced hydrocarbons. That contrasts with a cost of more than $200,000/ton of hydrocarbon exhaust emissions reduced by severely reformulating fuels,
New automobile hardware such as preheated catalysts that reduce emissions from cold engine starts has the potential of reducing emissions at costs lower than severely reformulated gasolines, Kinnear said.
Kinnear urged immediate, common sense actions to protect the environment while assuring adequate supplies of affordable energy. Among them are incentives for quicker retirement of older cars, which produce 25% of all automobile emissions, and effective inspection and maintenance laws to reduce emissions from poorly maintained cars.
Calling on state legislators to become "intimately involved" in decisions regarding implementation of CAA amendments, Kinnear urged that they not "get stampeded into costly decisions without first weighing carefully the costs and benefits of all environmental options open to your state."
He said, "As a nation, our aim should be to obtain the greatest benefits for the cost and to do it by finding the best balance among the three E's: energy, economics, and the environment."
Copyright 1991 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.
