The Fuel Additive Standardization Act

Be it enacted by the House of Representatives in Congress assembled

Mr. Kiefer, for himself and Mr. Garwood, introduces the following, to be submitted to the Committee on Energy and Commerce

A BILL

To standardize fuel additives for the ease of transferability from one company to another

SECTION I: SHORT TITLE

This bill may be referred to as the "Fuel Additive Standardization Act".

SECTION II: FINDINGS OF CONGRESS

Congress finds the following:

1. Prior to certain laws enacted for the preservation of the environment, gasoline was transferrable from one energy company to another because it was the same everywhere, thus keeping the supplies high.

2. After the enactment of certain environmental laws, energy companies were forced to come up with additives that would reduce fuel emissions, thus cleaning the air.

3. The result of these efforts were a multitude of additve formulas, all approved by the Federal Government, that were designed to clean engines in an effort to reduce fuel emissions.

4. Because of this, fuel was no longer transferrable. One company's fuel was no longer the same as another, rendering each gas useless to the other.

5. As a result, fuel supplies were effectively constricted, driving up prices.

6. In this time of crisis, it now becomes necessary to standardize fuel additives to make fuel transferrable once more.


SECTION III: FUEL ADDITIVE STUDY

A. Congress shall study the various fuel additives in existence in the market and determine which additive best achieves the goals set forth in Federal Law.

B. Thereafter, Congress, by its power to regulate commerce, shall. by act of legislation, impose a standard additive formula which shall be used by all energy companies that produce gasoline and similar products.

C. All companies shall have three months to comply with this law.

D. Companies found to be in non-compliance shall be fined no less than one thousand dollars ($1000) per 10,000 gallons of gasoline or similar product sold during the period of non-compliance until the company is brought back into compliance.

SECTION IV: ENABLING SECTION

This law shall become effective upon appropriate passage and/or the signature of the President or his designate in compliance with the Constitution.

Madame Chair,
From 1975 until 1992 I was intimately involved in the supply, distribution, and storage of refined petroleum products. (OOC, I'm a lot older than most pple in this sim you see, lol). In the final 10 years of my career I was an Operations manager for a storage facility in Hartford, CT, (about 500,000 barels). My daily existence revolved around the movement and prices of products, by barge and pipeline amongst facilities in New York Harbor, New Haven, Hartford, Providence, Boston, and Portland, Maine.

I have maintained contacts with friends in the industry, and while my expertise is not what it once was, this bill is puzzling to me. The realities of the transportation, strorage, seasonal blending, and trademarked additives of refined products in general, and gasoline in particular as I know them do not mandate such a bill in the least.

I am not emotional, I have no stake in this bill one way or the other, so please do not mistake these words in cyberspace as such. I canot in any way find a need for this bill.

The near entirety of section 2 is false. There are bits of fact here and there, but the bottom line is this:

Additives do vary by region and season. The Clean Air Act, the base average air quality specific to that region, how gasoline burns at particular ambient seasonal temperatures, temperatures by region, and trademark formulae are most of the factors that make for an array of additives.

This array has never impacted the transfer and storage of what the industry calls "fungible motor gasoline", a fancy jargon for what the bill refers to as "transferrable". It has therefore never impacted supply, this occurs for many other reasons.

The bill basically seems to assume that additives are added at the refinery gate, and then travel across the country until finally going into the ground at your neighborhood gas station, thus mandating some extremely complicated national system of plumbing, transporatation, and storage of gasoline. This is not ture.

Additives are added, not at the refinery, but at the same time that the fuel enters the delivery truck at the local level. It is at that time that "oxygenates", (jargon for the clean air stuff, which varies by region, season, etc), and the particular trademarked blend of additives are added. So clearly the "plumbing" needed to move vast quantities of gas around the nation is as simple as it ever was.

Minute quantities of additives are usually the rule, with the exception of oxygenates, (mostly ethanol in the northeast). I would estimate that for every one million barrels of storage for gasoline that no more than 1,000 bbls. of storage would be required for additives.

I hope there is not some big change I don't know about in the industry, and hope my comments were not too painul in length.

I yield

This post has been edited by tompea on Dec 2 2004, 01:00 PM

Madame Chairwoman,

A question to the person who spoke before me:

Now, this person said:

Now, let us say, for example, that, while the gasoline was being transported from in the truck to one station, and then some unforseen crisis occurs and it needs to be transported to another station that belongs to a company that uses a different fuel additive formula. Is there not a problem created at this point because the fuel is now useless to all but the original destination?

I yield.

This post has been edited by Rapierman on Dec 3 2004, 12:04 PM

Madame Chair,
To respond to my colleague:

An insightful question, thanks.

Extremely short answer, No.
This kind of thing happens all the time, everyday. The nature of the emergency is usually that some "other" station, who is also a customer of the trucking company is about to run out of gas. (usually their own fault, but anyhow). And of course they still have other grades of gas in the ground, so they are not totally out.

A few details:

1) Perspective:
The truck is carying no more than 8,500 gallons, a microscopic, infinitesimally small amount with respect to this bill. That's 200 bbls.

2) Terminals, tank farms, supply depots are a constant stream of deliv trucks over the course of the day and night.

3) The next truck from that trucking company into the terminal simply "changes its load", and goes to the station with the problem. Original truck goes to its original location.

4) The station in question simply jumps to the top of the list. If this took more than a half day to rectify, that would be extraordinary, and we covered locations over a radius of maybe 300 miles. Most stations never run out of gas. In my 17 years i saw only a few.

5) and dropping, e.g., a load of texaco into a citgo station happens a lot more than anyone would ever guess, either by mistake of the driver, or at the direction of the station's operator. I did that on numerous occasiosn when I did not want to take the chance of waiting 2 extra hours for the "emergency" load to arrive.

basicaly, stations are segregated in terms of brand and exact fuel additive packages. Tank farms are not. The terminal I ran for example, we serviced citgo, texaco, and sunoco locations, all from the same tanks, changing only the aditive package at the time the truck loaded.

hope that helps.

I yeild

Madam Chairwoman,

I see many holes in this legislation and I believe that we should either look towards defeat or to amending the bill. I have this question for the author.

You do not state where the study is occuring, what the timeframe is or for any type of standards. Am I missing something in this legislation?

Rep. Dave Anderson
Republican
11th District
New Jersey

Madame Chair,
To the gentleman from New Jersey, as to amending the bill, the issues addresed in the bill do not exist. I would be happy to answer any questions about transportation and storage of refined products, (it is a fascinating business), but there just are no circumstances for such a law.

I yield.

May I remind the committee members that the hearings are held primarily to ask questions of the authors and sponsors of the bill. Please save your individual arguments for the debates.