[StBernard] Southeast Louisiana's largest producer of ethanol-free gasoline won't make it anymore

[Westley Annis]

Southeast Louisiana's largest producer of ethanol-free gasoline won't make
it anymore
Print Todd Masson, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune By Todd Masson, NOLA.com |
The Times-Picayune 
Email the author | Follow on Twitter 
on May 05, 2014 at 3:31 PM, updated May 05, 2014 at 5:56 PM

Ethanol is about as popular in most of America as Donald Sterling.

That's particularly true among boaters, most of whom would rather pump sand
in their tanks than any gasoline mixed with ethanol. When a boat is on "E,"
its owner will drive right by a dozen stations that sell ethanol to find a
small mom-and-pop station that supplies pure gasoline -- usually at a higher
price.

But that may soon be an impossibility in most of South Louisiana.

Chalmette Refining, the major supplier of ethanol-free gasoline in the area,
informed some of its dealers last week that it will no longer produce
ethanol-free fuel.

Waguespack Oil, an area distributor that buys from Chalmette Refining, heard
about the change secondhand when a competing refinery forwarded the email
Chalmette Refining had sent out.

According to Waguespack's Jim Olsen, the refinery stated it would stop
producing non-ethanol fuel on May 16.

"We were getting all of our non-ethanol gasoline out of Chalmette, but
that's apparently disappearing," Olsen said.

That's a major blow to Southeast Louisiana boaters, according to ethanol
critic Alton "Pete" Landry of LaPlace.

"This is a total game-changer. It will be devastating, just devastating," he
said. "They're the last large supplier of ethanol-free gas in Louisiana.

"This will transfer Louisiana from the Sportsman's Paradise to the
Sportsman's Graveyard."

Chalmette Refining, a joint venture owned by ExxonMobil and Petroleos de
Venezuela, processes 192,500 barrels of crude oil a day, according to the
Energy Information Administration.

Placid Refining in Port Allen and Westlake's Phillips 66 Lake Charles
Refinery will continue to produce ethanol-free fuel, Landry said, but it
will be of little benefit to boaters in Southeast Louisiana.

Placid is a much smaller refinery than Chalmette Refining, processing only
57,000 barrels of crude oil a day. Less than 15 percent of the fuel it
produces is non-ethanol gasoline, Landry said.

The Phillips refinery in Westlake has the capacity to process 239,000
barrels of crude oil a day, but most of its non-ethanol fuel is gobbled up
in Southwest Louisiana, Landry said.

"The transportation costs are going to eat the distributors up to have to
come to the east side of the state," Landry said.

Landry estimates the few stations in Southeast Louisiana that are able to
still get ethanol-free fuel will have to charge at least 25 cents more per
gallon to recover some of the transportation costs.

"It's going to force many stations that are currently carrying ethanol-free
gas to convert to corn gas," he said. "In addition to that, there are many
small stations that are older that were grandfathered in. Their tanks and
pumps are not compatible with ethanol gas. It's going to force them to go
out of the business altogether."

The National Marine Manufacturers Association says that ethanol is "one of
the greatest concerns facing the recreational boating industry today."

The problem is that ethanol is hygroscopic, which means it bonds with water.
Boats, of course, are in wet environments when in use, but ethanol causes
serious issues in boats that sit up for several weeks.

Boat tanks vent into the atmosphere, and the fuel they contain expands and
contracts with the heating and cooling of each day. Contracting fuel sucks
in outside air, which brings humidity with it. That moisture in the air
bonds with the ethanol and deposits itself into the fuel.

It is then sucked into the motor the next time the angler uses the boat.

"You do not want that stuff going through your engine and filters," said
Jimmy Fisackerly of Boat Stuf, a local company that repairs outboard motors.
"It's creating havoc. It clogs injectors and can burn an engine up."

But even fresh ethanol fuel can be harmful to marine engines. In 2011,
Mercury Marine completed a study, funded by the federal government, to
determine the impact of running gasoline with a 15-percent ethanol
concentration through outboard motors.

As part of the study, researchers ran six outboards constantly for as many
as 300 hours to see how they held up. Half the motors were run on E15, while
the others were run on straight gasoline.

Only one of the motors powered by E15 completed the test, but it was a
9.9-horsepower outboard that was far from unscathed. Researchers reported
that "several elastomeric components on the E15 engine showed signs of
deterioration compared with the E0 engine."

Also tested was a 200-horsepower two-stroke that threw a rod at 256 hours
while running E15. The same motor running pure gasoline performed well.

The other outboard was a 300-horsepower four-stroke that failed three
exhaust valves near the end of the test. The same motor running straight
gasoline had no such trouble.

But it's not only outboards that have issues with running on ethanol,
according to Landry.

"I want to know how these refineries are going to answer the frustrations of
people here in Southeast Louisiana when the next hurricane comes and they go
to start their generator and it won't run because they used it last with
ethanol gas," he said. "I saw that personally after Isaac in 2012. My local
repair shop had 50 generators in their yard waiting for repairs because
people last used ethanol gas and let them sit. They wouldn't start."

Ethanol has been broadsided in recent months by numerous studies showing it
to be inefficient and environmentally harmful. Even the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change said it "can lead to greater total emissions than
when using petroleum products" because of the extra energy required to
produce the stuff.

Additionally, organizations like Oxfam and the Environmental Working Group
oppose ethanol because of the severe impact its had on the poor by driving
up food prices.

So far, though, U.S. refiners are still required to meet certain ethanol
mandates, some of which are preposterous. For instance, the initial mandate
for cellulosic ethanol in 2013 was 1.75 billion gallons. The entire industry
was able to successfully produce a mere 810,000 gallons that year, only
.0004 percent of the mandate.

In the first quarter of this year, the biofuels industry produced 75,000
gallons of cellulosic ethanol.

Numerous calls to Chalmette Refining seeking comment on its decision were
not returned.


**************
Todd Masson can be reached at tmasson at nola.com or 504.232.3054.