GAfuels readers already know of the many advantages to using mogas in aircraft approved for its use. Not only does its save them $1.40-$1.50 per gallon compared to avgas, but these pilots are making real progress in reducing lead emissions from general aviation, the only significant consumer of leaded fuel on the planet.

While your bloggers would always recommend obtaining aviation-grade mogas directly from a fuel terminal, and have it delivered and stored in aviation-grade fuel equipment at your airport, in many instances the gasoline obtainable at retail gas stations and marinas is quite suitable for aircraft, provided it has the correct octane (AKI) rating and contains no ethanol. It is absolutely necessary to check each and every batch of fuel obtained from retail sellers of gasoline for the presence of ethanol, regardless how the pump may be labeled. (Fuel contamination is rare, but occurs for every type of fuel, including avgas and Jet-A).

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Petersen Aviation, known best as the world’s authority on the use of mogas in aviation, has launched a greatly improved web site to make the conversion to mogas even easier than ever.

The new site includes the means to quickly determine if a mogas STC is available for your engine and airframe combination. The choice of airplane images on the web site depicts the wide range of aircraft that are covered by Petersen STCs, from the Piper Cub to the Douglas DC-3.

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There is a rather clarifying paragraph in the EPA Notice published Nov. 16 that denied a waiver on ethanol blending quotas that was requested by several states, resulting from the effects of the drought on the corn crop this summer. I turn your attention to pages 27-29 of the document, which clearly outlines the changes happening in the gasoline production environment and portends the end of premium unleaded gasoline as we know it:

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According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that the United States will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s leading producer of oil by 2020. Due in part to the remarkable yields enabled by hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and directional drilling, [Read more...]

The northeastern region of the U.S. is one of the RFG (Reformulated Gas) Areas where the EPA dictates the use of an oxygenate in gasoline to lower carbon monoxide emissions. In the U.S., ethanol is the most common oxygenate, in addition to it raising a fuel’s AKI (Anti-Knock Index, commonly called octane) rating by about 2-3 points. Oil companies, realizing a means to lower the cost of refining, typically deliver a sub-octane fuel known as BOB (Blendstock for Oxygenate Blending) to fuel terminals in there areas, where ethanol is then blended into the fuel. This is the reason that in RFG areas one has difficulty finding ethanol-free fuel, as can be seen by comparing the RFG map to Pure-Gas.org map.

Without ethanol, BOB’s AKI rating is only 84, below the needed 87 for the cheapest Regular gas. BOB is not a legal “finished” fuel until ethanol is added. Thus, any disruption in the supply of ethanol (such as a storm or ethanol rail car explosion) will affect an oil company’s ability to provide finished gasoline. Prior to Sandy’s making landfall, this CNBC article summed up the danger simply: “Bottom line — if we run out of ethanol we run out of gasoline.”

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In news that is sure to send shock waves throughout the ethanol industry and the EPA, one of the world’s largest oil companies is shelving plans to produce so-called cellulosic ethanol from non-food plants such as wood chips and switchgrass. As described in an article from the Wall Street Journal, “BP PLC Thursday said it is ending plans to build a commercial-scale cellulosic-ethanol plant in Florida, saying it instead will focus on research and development.”

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Commodities, by one definition, are “mass-produced unspecialized products.” Typical traded commodities include grain, coffee, sugar, pork bellies, feeder cattle, industrial and precious metals, natural gas and oil. They are produced worldwide in enormous quantities, resulting in most cases in far lower real costs than a century ago when limitations to transportation and political barriers to trade restricted producers to their own local markets.

For many years, aircraft manufacturers have made use of some of these commodities, [Read more...]

Pilots in the Midwest have received some good news amidst the rising cost of avgas in recent months. Both the Havana Regional Airport (9I0, Havana, Ill.) and the Park Township Airport (HLM, Holland, Mich.) started mogas sales in recent months.

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