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April 20, 2006
Another Gasoline Boondoggle
Ah, MTBE's are causing gasoline shortages now, isn't that great? Oil officials are pointing to the fact that a so-called fuel cleaner, There's not a shortage of supply," said John Eichberger, a spokesman for the gasoline group. "It's a transitional issue."....
MTBE, imposed a few years back by government turns out to be a ground water polluter, so it was pulled from production and the brilliant government officials that brought MTBE decided that Ethanol should be added in place of MTBE and they gave a deadline for that to happen...which is now. One problem, all the gasoline holding tanks had to be prep'd first and it's become a clogged up mess in the transition.
Because ethanol is a solvent, it will strip corrosion and impurities that build up inside gasoline storage tanks, allowing them to mingle with gasoline supplies.
That means terminal operators must drain giant tanks that hold gasoline stocks and scrub out the impurities before they can be refilled with ethanol-enriched gasoline, he said.
"That's going to compromise supplies for awhile," he said.
The American Petroleum Institute said 40 percent of the gasoline produced in the United States by the first week of April was blended with ethanol, up from 33 percent a year ago."
Posted by Post Scripts at April 20, 2006 03:19 PM
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