No More MTBE, Oil Company Announces

By Lookout Staff

One of the state's largest oil companies announced Monday that it plans to stop using MTBE in its gasoline, the same additive that has polluted Santa Monica's drinking water wells and left the city battling for compensation.

Tosco officials said they would reformulate their gasoline blend by the end of next year and promised that prices would not rise, despite reports suggesting that reformulated gasoline could cost an extra six cents a gallon. They will replace MTBE -- or methyl tertiary butyl ether, which health studies suggest may cause cancer -- with ethanol.

However, the offer is contingent on the federal government's waiving a clean-air rule that requires refiners to use a compound to clean pollutants out of gasoline. The federal waiver must be granted in 90 days or Tosco will not have enough time to retrofit its refineries before a statewide ban on MTBE takes effect in two years.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, and Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-San Diego, are authoring legislation that would lift California's oxygenate requirement, allowing Tosco and other refiners to strip MTBE from their formulas.

The acronym MTBE, which reduces pollutants by helping gasoline burn more
completely, became a household word in Santa Monica two years ago when the
city discovered high levels of the additive in its drinking water supplies.

The poster child for MTBE opponents, Santa Monica ended up suing Mobil Oil
Corp. to pay for the clean-up of some of its wells and to buy residents water piped in by the Metropolitan Water District.

The additive has pitted environmentalists against each other. Those who support clean air favor MTBE and laud it for reducing air pollution; however, those concerned about water quality say MTBE is a curse when it leaks from underground storage tanks and other sources into drinking water supplies.