Mississippi State Senator Michael Watson has just introduced Senate Bill 2137, “An act to require retail dealers and distributors of gasoline to offer for sale or use nonethanol-blended unleaded premium grade gasoline.”
When asked for his motivation, the Senator from Pascagula, on Mississippi’s Gulf coast, replied: “Being from the coast, I continue to hear about my constituents having to spend money repairing their boats, lawn mowers, weed eaters, etc. I’d heard several folks talking about the consequences of ethanol and decided to do a little digging, which ultimately lead to my drafting of this bill.”
Readers can see the full original text of the bill here, and track its progress through the Mississippi Senate here.
Your bloggers applaud Senator Watson, and encourage all our readers to send this information to their state representatives and ask them to follow his example.
The GAfuels Blog is written by two private pilots concerned about the future availability of fuels for piston-engine aircraft: Dean Billing, Sisters, Ore., a pilot, homebuilder and expert on autogas and ethanol, and Kent Misegades, Cary, N.C., an aerospace engineer, aviation sales rep for U-Fuel, and president of EAA1114.
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Update – this bill was killed in committee.
You expected something different?
And Joanne … where do you get your information? Â Two times since 2008 when the federal RFS standard was implemented, ethanol has been more expensive than gasoline, so it actually raised the price of gasoline.
Joanne, the choice is really between a few cents more for premium, ethanol-free fuel and destroying a $20,000-$100,000 boat, classic car, airplane, tractor, etc. If the subsidies and cost of mandates for ethanol were included in the price of the ethanol blended into our fuels, the cost of gas would be much higher. As things stand now, we’re robbing Peter to pay Paul with ethanol, then we destroy Peter’s property when he is forced to use ethanol.  Let free markets decide which are the best fuels, and please get the governments out of our life and our fuel tanks.
Have you looked into how much this fuel would cost? Â Because use of ethanol to provide higher octane is so much cheaper than the petroleum-based molecules that would do the same, I believe that the cost of non-ethanol fuel would be more than people want to pay and not economically feasible for gas stations to put in the additional infrastructure to comply with such a law. Â My understanding is that marinas were given the option to have non-ethanol fuel to sell at marinas when MTBE was banned as an octane enhancer. Â They decided not to do that for two reasons. Â First, it would cost more than the fuel they were selling; second, it would cost more than the fuel sold at regular gas stations and many outboard motor boats on trailers usually fill up at regular gas stations.