MTBE Contaminates Water, Benefits Don't Offset.

July 28,1999

An Environmental Protection Agency panel says the clean air benefits of MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether) aren't sufficient to offset the dangers the gasoline additive poses for the nation's water supplies. MTBE in gasoline should be reduced or eliminated. That is good news for ethanol producers, but the panel did not pave a clear road to the increased use of ethanol to replace MTBE.

However, the panel also recommended that Congress reverse a Clean Air Act requirement that 2% of reformulated gasoline include oxygen by weight. That is a "misplaced" recommendation, says the Renewable Fuels Association. "The panel failed to fully evaluate the extensive data available regarding ethanol supply. Information presented to the panel...demonstrates that, with a gradual phase out of MTBE, more than adequate supplies of ethanol would exist to meet the oxygen requirement in a cost effective manner," said RFA President Eric Vaughn.

The panel said it "recognizes that Congress, when adopting the oxygen requirement, sought to advance several national policy goals (energy security and diversity, agricultural policy) that are beyond the scope of our expertise and deliberations." Vaughn says it's "precisely because of these other policy goals and objectives that the oxygen requirement should be maintained and ethanol's use increased as MTBE use is reduced."

For the Oxygenated Fuels Association, the panel's recommendations were not all roses. "We disagree with the panel's view that reducing MTBE use is necessary to achieve" the objective to protect the nation's water supplies. Reformulated gasoline with MTBE "has been instrumental in significantly improving air quality for some 60 million Americans, and oxygenates like MTBE provide refiners with much needed flexibility to produce cleaner burning reformulated gasoline," says OFA Executive Director Terry Wigglesworth.

She said that the water protection recommendations from the panel "offer pragmatic solutions to water-gasoline contamination problems. Once these recommendations are implemented, states will enjoy adequate water protection, and thus there is no need to restrict refiner options as to what kind of tools they can use to produce cleaner burning fuels."

OFA is "confident" that MTBE "will continue to play a major role in the formulation of cleaner-burning gasoline with or without the federal (2%) requirement."

But REUTERS quotes Rob Harvan, analyst at Bonner & Moore in Houston ,saying the panel recommendation "is as close as you can get to a death blow for MTBE, short of an outright ban." The panel's report implicitly supports the decision by California to ban MTBE beginning in 2003 and provides impetus to other states moving in the same direction.