Motor Fuel Choices

Dan Energy, General

fuel choices nozzle with biofuel
Cathy Isom fills us in about the number of fuel choices for drivers filling up at the pump. That’s coming up on This Land of Ours.

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When filling up at your local gas station, there’s generally a blend of 10-percent Ethanol and 90-percent gasoline. There are many vehicles on the road now that could run on a higher ethanol blend from so-called E-15 on up to 85-percent Ethanol

“But folks can’t buy the fuel if it’s not available.”

That was Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack in Florida one year ago announcing a then-new program called the biofuel infrastructure partnership or BIP. It would combine grant money from USDA with money from state governments or private groups to help gas stations pay the high costs of putting in new storage tanks and new blender pumps for the higher ethanol fuels.

Just recently at a station in Virginia…

“this station is just one important piece of a broader national effort to expand our ethanol infrastructure throughout our country.”

Acting Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Michael Scuse at a Sheets convenience store/gas station. Sheets has over 500 stores mostly in the mid-Atlantic and mid-west. This station here offering for the first time 15-percent ethanol blended gas on up to E-85. Sheets company Vice President Mike Lorenz told reporters…

“we wouldn’t have currently 10 stores open in Virginia selling E-15 and E-85 if it weren’t for the USDA’s bio fuels infrastructure partnership grant.”

And Michael Scuse says the BIP program is a…

“one hundred million dollar program to be matched either by states or by the private sector, to do infrastructure at our service stations around the United States so that they could supply our consumers with blends of E-15 or higher.”

21 states, including Florida, and several private groups have contributed to the effort that would nearly double the number of pumps nationwide supplying a variety of…

“lower cost, cleaner, american-made fuel.”

For the pumps already supplying these blends – prices are around 40-cents a gallon cheaper than the regular unleaded gas.