E15 Approved

E15 Approved. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

Homegrown fuel. It appears to be a bit more a reality. On Friday the EPA gave approval to retailers to sell 15% ethanol blended gasoline. The industry is gearing up for imminent sales of the new blend level, possibly this week. Renewable Fuels Association President and CEO Bob Dinneen explains how the final, final hurdle to E15 sales was overcome.

DINEEN: Well EPA determined that there was as yet another final hurdle because as they reviewed the requests from gasoline marketers to begin actually selling E15, they recognized that there were actually gasoline pumps out there in the marketplace that would be offering E15 for sale to consumers that might have a variety of configurations. And they grew concerned that consumers would pull up to a pump that had previously been used to sell E15 and because there’s one-third of a gallon of residual fuel in the hose at the pump that that could leave some fuels out of compliance. And so while we thought the final step had been taken, EPA decided, nope, there has to be one other step. We need to figure out how to assure there won’t be miss fueling for that one-third of a gallon that remains in the hose potentially causing and issue for someone who might just get a gallon. And so we had to address that issue with EPA.

The issue requires a minimum of a 4-gallon sale requirement. Dinneen says the first sales of E15 in the country could occur this week but there are still challenges.

DINEEN: The agency has now sent two gasoline marketers approvals for sale. So E15 can indeed be offered for commercial sale today. We are finally here. Certainly Iowa, Kansas and Illinois - one of those is going to be the first state and it will probably happen this week so we are really looking forward to it. But we think it’s going to happen soon for a couple of marketers. They are indeed looking at their pump configuration, figuring out what they need to do. The bigger challenge now for them is just finding blend stocks because EPA has as yet failed to extend the volatile tolerance that exists for 10% ethanol blends, the E15, there still may be some marketers out there that’ll have difficulty throughout the summer months finding blend stock.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.