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GASOLINE UPDATE
JULY 12, 2008

Well the know-nothings in government have finally done it!! In the Madison Wisconsin area, and I suspect around the country the pressure exerted by the disciples of George W, which includes nearly every politician by their actions regardless of party affiliation, have forced the ethanol literally down our throats.

The last hold out on Madison’s west side, Hilldale Shell will be forced to sell ethanol-dosed Regular and Mid-Grade gasoline as of Sunday July 13, 2008. Bennett’s Sinclair at the corner of Airport road and the Old Beltline still sells real gas as of this date, but the inexorable tide of ignorance may have those days numbered by sheer economic pressure.

Everything we have been suggesting is now called into direct question, and justifiably so. Ethanol is still crap and doesn’t belong in motor fuel in this climate. There is a 46 cent per gallon government subsidy on corn-based ethanol and a 54 cent per gallon tariff on sugar-cane based ethanol from Brazil. That is a $ 1.00 per gallon swing in pricing just from government interference WITHOUT the taxes. Write your elected representatives and bitch them out for taking it upon themselves to control your choices in transportation. We have handed the control of our transport and food prices to people who are lucky if they can find their way home at night.

Ethanol still reduces mileage in the vehicles it is run in, absorbs moisture from the surrounding atmosphere, has the potential to carry acids with it into the fuel system and ruin injectors and pumps (due to shoddy processing and storage), and STILL cost more per gallon to produce than it yields.

In the recent past Regular grade gasoline was built from an 87 Octane base stock, with Mid-Grade built using a bit of ethanol as a rule. Premium characteristically did not use ethanol to gain its octane, but its slow sales (18% of the volume in a typical market, with Mid-Grade selling 6-10%) caused concern from stale product. Now the evil geniuses in the gasoline industry will be using an 84 Octane base stock to build their regular and further dosing the product to achieve the needed octane ratings. Premium, in Shell’s case will still not contain ethanol, but will be priced 20 to 30 cents per gallon higher than Regular. There is also talk of reducing Premium’s octane rating to 91 from the current 93.

Now we will move on the practical side of dealing with this mess. The question now is whether the presence of ethanol in all Regular and Mid-Grade gasolines will drive enough consumers to the Premium to drive sales to the point that the product’s freshness is no longer an issue. Only the next couple of months will tell that. I will be keeping in touch with the retailers in our area to track changes in buying habits. In the meantime try to find a retailer who orders NON-Ethanol Premium with every load of Regular to assure the best chance of fresh product. The presence of Ethanol is worse than too much octane if both products are fresh. We will be testing the behavior of Premium in the shop environment over the next three weeks and will report on its behavior under controlled circumstances.

The addition of Ethanol and the attending reduction in performance and mileage has been documented for years and the expanding “Dead Zone” in the Gulf of Mexico has been attributed to the additional fertilizer runoff due to the additional acreage planted in ethanol-destined corn. So you can thank the government being pushed around by big business (Oil and Agribusiness) for making food more expensive, increased fuel consumption, and making vehicles run like crap.

WRITE YOU ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES AND TELL THEM TO GET THEIR HANDS OUT OF YOUR POCKETS AND TO QUIT FORCING YOU TO BUY ETHANOL!!!!

YOU ARE PAYING RECORD HIGH PRICES FOR THE WORST GASOLINES EVER OFFERED!!!!

That being said, if you don’t care to do anything it’s your own damn fault. I walk to work every day.

Cheers!
Bill