EPA Put Diesel Fuel Under the Microscope

Diesel, the lifeblood of the trucking industry, was under the microscope of the Environmental Protection Agency in 2000, with the most sweeping changes occurring late in the year when the agency issued its fuel rules for 2006.

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Those rules require all diesel fuel sold after June 1, 2006, to contain 97% less sulfur than what it has now.

This means refiners that choose to make the new fuel will have to reduce the sulfur content to 15 parts per million of sulfur from the current maximum on-road limit of 500 ppm. A 15 ppm amount of sulfur represents 15 grams of sulfur to 999,985 grams of other material, or “equivalent to less than a tablespoon of water in an Olympic-size swimming pool,” said J. Louis Frank, president of Marathon Ashland Petroleum.

Frank said it will be a difficult process to achieve. Extra steps have to be taken at the refinery to remove the sulfur, and precautions need to be made to ensure the fuel is not contaminated in its transmission through a common pipeline.

“The reality is that refiners would actually have to reduce levels below 15 ppm to have a reasonable [assurance] that product stayed on spec,” said Frank to a Senate subcommittee June 15.

Refiners agreed the fuel will cost more, maybe as much as 50-cents-per gallon, to help offset some of the $4 billion to $6 billion refineries must invest in equipment to make the fuel. The American Petroleum Institute did not rule out price spikes of about $2.50 a gallon for the fuel in the Rocky Mountain States. API anticipated that few refiners will want to produce the fuel and that could lead to production problems overall.

For these and other reasons, API lobbied Congress to stop the rules from going into effect. The effort was unsuccessful.

For the full story, see the Jan. 1 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.