There is a chilling comment in the E15 waiver process that is now before the EPA that indicates that it is likely that ethanol free gasoline will essentially disappear as we know it. Maybe there will be small amounts available in drums just as leaded and special racing fuel is now but it will be prohibitively expensive.

This is what the Director of the Division of Air Resources, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation stated in his comment: (Comments in italics are my comments)

"E10 is not simply ethanol added to finished gasoline. Since most gasoline at retail contains ethanol, the industry factors the addition of ethanol into the formulation of the petroleum-based portion of the final blend. The chemical properties of ethanol and its dilution impact allow refiners to produce a petroleum-based blendstock which when combined with a specified amount of ethanol (or other oxygenate) results in a final blend with the desired legal and market properties. The petroleum-based blendstock, in most cases, would not qualify as gasoline or be legal to sell as gasoline. For RFG (Reformulated Gasoline, the really clean stuff required in certain areas) this blendstock is RBOB. For conventional gasoline it is CBOB, (this is what is coming down the Olympic pipeline to Washington and Oregon) and for California RFG it is CaRBOB."

What this means is that not only will 91+ AKI premium unleaded disappear as we knew, but 89 AKI CBOB used for making 91+ AKI premium E10 cannot be used for the EAA STCs, low compression Petersen STCs, nor the 85 HP Rotax engines because it is not "legal" gasoline. Essentially nobody will be able to order any ethanol free gasoline product.

You should realize that the ethanol blendstock is cheaper to make for the refineries and results in more gasoline product because the AKI is lower, so they have a huge incentive to make this stuff. We also know from the testimony of WSPA in the Washington public hearings that CBOB is the only gasoline product that is going to be available at the terminals in short order in Washington. It is already the only product delivered to Oregon since we are a mandatory E10 state. We know that the only ethanol free product coming into Oregon is by barge from somewhere else than the Washington refineries and that Lewiston, ID airport has been cut off from this supply already. Pullman, WA is probably next and then all of Oregon where SB-1079 will mean nothing.

The city of Seattle just quit using "biofuels" in their fleet. There was an editorial about it in the paper. If I can find the darn thing I could say more what they said about it. This reffered mostly to the use of "Biodiesel" fuels. The reason for them stopping use of it was because they found that among other things, it was hurting the environment more than helping it. It is now a known fact that the use of biofuels is not only causing more polution than it prevents but it also is causing massive problems with the food supply in the third world countries. The rain forests are being slaughtered with renewed vigor because of the demand for fuel made from grain. It requires a massive amount of acerage to produce fuels from it. (Dont have the figures in front of me, but are easily found). All of this is pushing the price of corn and other grains skyward as these products are now in demand for biofuels which is actually indirectly/directly contributing to starvation in undeveloped countries, and it is entirely politically motivated. However, more and more people are waking up to the truth the impact this biofuel program is having on the world and the politics driving it with undesired results as usual. Hopefully the tide will begin to turn soon as sanity prevails, and the government push to promote this damaging program will begin to erode.

In central-western Brazil, which accounts for half the country's soybean output, the area planted with soybeans is expected to drop 2.9 percent, to 9.35 million hectares (23.1 million acres).

That was for 2008/9. If you believe all the rainforest devastation stuff, etc. , you're just falling for the Grocery Manufacturers and oil company propaganda. They're mad at competition. Also, just got home from eating out and it looks to me like most people should quit eating so much.

If you guys want facts, look at the price of corn today compared to this time last year. It is half of what it was a year ago.

Lucky for all of you that like to blame ethanol and corn prices for all your problems, everything else is half price of what it was last year at this time--or is it??

http://quotes.ino.com/chart/?s=CBOT_C.N09&v=d12

This chart shows corn futures prices over the last 12 months. If you want to argue, put up some facts. Corn futures are at the same levels they were 2 years ago, when there were virtually no ethanol mandates

http://quotes.ino.com/chart/?s=CBOT_C.N09&v=dmax

Last 2 years are shown in the second chart

1593Y wrote

The petroleum-based blendstock, in most cases, would not qualify as gasoline or be legal to sell as gasoline.

I didn't see the original post until now. I'm surprised you even posted this. By blending superior ethanol with some "rot gut" hydrocarbons that wouldn't make it alone, we are stretching our domestic oil supplies. I can't think of anything better--- I can't understand your logic at all.

180Marty wrote:1593Y wrote

The petroleum-based blendstock, in most cases, would not qualify as gasoline or be legal to sell as gasoline.

I didn't see the original post until now. I'm surprised you even posted this.

I am sorry that you completely missed the point of the post. The main point for aviation is that more than 60,000 STCs are going to be worthless and the recommended gasoline for almost every s-LSA will not be available. This represents a huge economic loss to aviation.

By blending superior ethanol with some "rot gut" hydrocarbons that wouldn't make it alone, we are stretching our domestic oil supplies. I can't think of anything better--- I can't understand your logic at all.

" "rot gut" hydrocarbons that wouldn't make it alone ..." is a rather interesting observation. I assume that you are a petroleum composition expert to be able to define CBOB or RBOB as "rot gut" hydrocarbons. It actually appears that the reason that the blending product doesn't meet "legal" gasoline specifications is so that it can meet legal gasoline specifications when the bizarre properties of ethanol are taken into account.

This was also pointed out in the comment:

"The blendstock for E15 would require a different package of additives which would probably contain greater amounts of deposit-control and anti-corrosive additives."

Please cite one large scale, statistically significant, independent study for your statement, "... stretching our domestic oil supplies." I can find none, and I have been looking for two years. I live in Oregon, a mandatory E10 state and the state bureaucrats makes this type of statement all of the time to justify giving the citizens of Oregon no choice at the pump, which seems the only way ethanol can make it in the marketplace. That and twenty years of taxpayer subsidies. Each time I have challenged the bureaucrats to produce the data to back up this statement, I am met by silence. If you go by anecdotal evidence there are an awful lot of cars that took a greater than 10% hit on mileage when Oregon went mandatory E10, which may mean we are using more gasoline now than before our mandatory program, but nobody actually knows. Do you?

Here is a quote from Supercub. I don't think this guy cares if ethanol survives or not.

Then again my 06 Honda PU is set up for E-10 and seems to run better and get better mileage on E-10 than "Pure"

Here is a link to the whole interesting thread. http://www.supercub.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=18760
I think this is your quote.

You should realize that the ethanol blendstock is cheaper to make for the refineries and results in more gasoline product because the AKI is lower, so they have a huge incentive to make this stuff.

Note cheaper and more.

The petroleum-based blendstock, in most cases, would not qualify as gasoline or be legal to sell as gasoline.

I take that to mean if it wouldn't qualify for gasoline it would go into some other less desirable fuel--- maybe No 6( cheap boiler fuel).

This thread made me remember a National Geographic TV show I watched as a kid in the late 60's. It was a race from London to Sydney( http://marathon68.homestead.com/americanrambler.html)and NG was following an American team driving a Rambler. They had to modify the compression ratio down to 6 to 1, as I remember, so that the gasoline in Turkey would work. Must have been some really low octane stuff but they were getting everything they could out of a barrel of crude.

180Marty wrote:>...

The petroleum-based blendstock, in most cases, would not qualify as gasoline or be legal to sell as gasoline.

I take that to mean if it wouldn't qualify for gasoline it would go into some other less desirable fuel--- maybe No 6( cheap boiler fuel).

CBOB is only made for ethanol blending. CBOB is the acronym for Conventional Blendstock for Oxygenate Blending.

Why do you think that the oil industry has quit fighting the ethanol industry and embraced them and is buying up all of your bankrupt ethanol plants at $0.25 on the dollar. They can make BOB which costs them less than gasoline, they get a tax credit to blend the ethanol and they now realize that E10 is probably selling more gasoline than when they were making E0 ... they won the trifecta.

I was at the Lebanon, PA Vet hospital today. A Lukoil station was advertising that Lukoil gas has no ethanol and never will.

Don't know anything beyond what the sign said, but I thought of all you guys when I saw the sign and thought I would tell y'all.

nealkas wrote:I was at the Lebanon, PA Vet hospital today. A Lukoil station was advertising that Lukoil gas has no ethanol and never will.

Don't know anything beyond what the sign said, but I thought of all you guys when I saw the sign and thought I would tell y'all.

Thanks for the message, you made my day. Looked up Lukoil because I had never heard of them. Wow! Times have sure changed. From their web site:

"Welcome to LukoilAmericas.com. LUKOIL’s presence continues its aggressive growth into mainstream U.S. markets. Building on its international recognition and its thirteen state sales platform in over 2,000 facilities which generate over two billion gallons of gasoline sales annually through its service bay and convenience store operations.

LUKOIL Americas, through its subsidiary Getty Petroleum Marketing Inc., proudly flies the flags of its two premier brands LUKOIL and GETTY. With the recent acquisition of ConocoPhillips premium assets in the states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania (Mobil brand), LUKOIL Americas is on it’s way to becoming a major force in the Eastern U.S. market.

LUKOIL America’s is a wholly owned subsidiary of LUKOIL Oil Company which is the leading vertically integrated oil company in Russia. Founded in 1991, LUKOIL Oil Company is one of the world’s top five publicly traded oil companies in terms of proven oil reserves."

Considering LUKOILs size there is no way that they can avoid putting ethanol in gasoline, some kind of gasoline. The federal RFS mandate of EISA 2007 gives every "major" gasoline producer a quota of ethanol that they have to blend. It can be E1 - E10 or E85, but they have to use the ethanol or they must pay a fine of up to $32,500 / day. Maybe Luckoil makes all of the E85 in their thirteen states or they put it in their Getty, Mobil and ConocoPhillips brands. Only "small refineries" are exempt and only until 2011. A small refinery is one that does less that 75000 bbl / year, or just over 3 million gallons, whereas Lukoil is bragging about doing more than 2 billion gallons of gasoline sales, which is about 1.5% of all the gasoline sold in the US in a year.

PS: yes I did pick the font color for a reason. Go to their web site and wait for Mr. Putin to smile at you in the flash presentation.

Yeah, they are Rooskie owned alright.

Hey, maybe thats why no ethanol!
It all goes in the vodka!!

Like I said, saw the sign, figured I'd pass the word.

nealkas wrote:Yeah, they are Rooskie owned alright.
Like I said, saw the sign, figured I'd pass the word.

Thanks, appreciate the info. They own Getty too. Do you know if the Getty stations have ethanol? Pennsylvania requires pumps to be labeled.

I noticed that Getty is in a lot of the northeastern states but Lukoil is only in PA? Does anyone know if they are in other NE states and sell E0?

Why do you think that the oil industry has quit fighting the ethanol industry and embraced them and is buying up all of your bankrupt ethanol plants at $0.25 on the dollar.

Hopefully the plants I'm invested in can hang on and not become oil company property. Time will tell. Just think, a year ago corn was over $7 a bushel and people were scared to sell since there was talk of $10. I still think BIG OIL had something to do with the unreal run up using their record profits to invest in corn futures.

Algenol has developed technology that produces ethanol by using algae, sunlight, carbon dioxide and seawater. The low-cost system produces 15 times as much ethanol per acre than corn fields, a rate that could rise to 50 times as much with innovations under development.

Dow Chemical Co. announced Monday that it is teaming with Algenol on a pilot-scale algae biorefinery in Freeport, Texas. Last Wednesday, Algenol applied for a $25 million stimulus grant through the U.S. Department of Energy, money that will kickstart the project.

The mandatory addition of ethanol to gasoline creates a huge market for the US farmers and I can understand why they love the mandate.

The question that lingers is just how much petroleum is corn based ethanol saving? It is certainly not one gallon of oil is saved for each gallon of ETOH blended. The tractors, combines, and other machinery run predominately on petroleum based fuels. ( Am I wrong on this?)

Also the majority of the fertilizers used to produce the high bushel per acre yields we are seeing by in large come from petroleum feed stocks.

ETOH is the only approved oxygen-ator (? right word) in gasoline. The petroleum industries entry turned out to contaminate the ground water so badly it was withdrawn. As an additive to improve air pollution it is what we are stuck with right now, which is why areas with air pollution problems were mandated to use ETOH during the smog prone months, but all fuel all the time????

Crude oil is the chemical base stock for such a wide variety of products, plastics, fertilizers, etc. it seems to be a good idea to blow less of it out our tailpipes. I am just not convinced growing food crops for ethanol or biodiesel is the right solution.

I have no idea if this is true or not, but several of the farmers around here are firmly of the mind that the corn price got speculated up on purpose by the oil and the big agro companies like Cargill and such.
This encouraged a bunch of farmers to borrow money to plant tons of corn, then the market crashed, bankrupting some more independent farmers. Now the big guys can swoop in and buy up the cropland for a few nickels on the dollar. The guys who told me this aren't what you would typically call wild-eyed conspiracy nuts. When you watch the runup in prices and then the drop, you got to wonder.

Most of the agribusiness corporations already treat farmers the way a pimp treats a 2 dollar whore. Talk nice to get'em to work in the spring , then beat the money out of them come fall.

Just my opinion

If people like ethanol, believe in ethanol, want to burn ethanol, or wan to grow corn to make ethanol- it's all right with me. Just don't force ethanol on me. At the very least, make non-ethanolized gasoline widely available for those who want it &/or need it. The idea of making all 87 octane gas E10 (or whatever) & all 91 octane E-zero seems like a good compromise to me. Certainly no one has a problem with that, eh?

Eric

nealkas wrote:>... A Lukoil station was advertising that Lukoil gas has no ethanol and never will.

Did some research. Lukoil stations are in PA, NY, NJ and Maine, at least. They also own Getty. Inquired of some pilots in Maine that have been very active in trying to insure ethanol free gasoline is available in Maine for aviation, which they get from Canada. The Lukoil stations in Maine are E10.

N1593Y wrote:

nealkas wrote:>... A Lukoil station was advertising that Lukoil gas has no ethanol and never will.

Did some research. Lukoil stations are in PA, NY, NJ and Maine, at least. They also own Getty. Inquired of some pilots in Maine that have been very active in trying to insure ethanol free gasoline is available in Maine for aviation, which they get from Canada. The Lukoil stations in Maine are E10.

You know, now that makes me wonder about the sign. I'd sure hate to be the unwitting purveyor of bad scoop.

Like I said, saw the sign, passed the word, but now I don't know what to think. Terribly sorry if I falsely raised any hopes.