What Others Are Saying
Demonizing for Dollars
Forbes, Nov. 15, 2004
"The latest bonanza for tort lawyers: going after Big Oil for MTBE, the gasoline additive. Never mind there's no proof the stuff is harmful. There's too much money to be made."
Energy Producers Operated Under an MTBE Mandate
The Wall Street Journal, July 26, 2005, Letter to the Editor
As chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources when the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments were put in place, I can assure you Congress and the EPA went into the MTBE process with eyes open. We recognized that, among the fuel additives the government was mandating for use in cleaning smog-prone city air, MTBE was the only commercially viable alternative at the time. MTBE's water solubility risks and ability to clean the air were trade-offs we faced.
J. Bennett Johnston
(Former Sen. Johnston chaired the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee from 1986 to 1994.)
Cornell ecologist’s study finds that producing ethanol and biodiesel from corn and other crops is not worth the money
Cornell News Service, July 5, 2005
“Turning plants such as corn, soybeans and sunflowers into fuel uses much more energy than the resulting ethanol or biodiesel generates, according to a new Cornell University and University of California-Berkeley study. ‘There is no energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid fuel,’ says David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell. ‘These strategies are not sustainable.
‘Ethanol production in the United States does not benefit the nation’s energy security, its agriculture, economy or the environment,’ says Pimentel.”
U.S. needs an oil change
The (McAllen, TX) Monitor October 2, 2005
“Basic fairness in energy policy is equally important. Congress dodged its responsibility earlier this year by not halting lawsuits against energy producers who merely put MTBE in the gasoline supply in good faith to comply with a federal clean air mandate. This fuel additive has been of particular concern in smog-prone states like New York and California.”
Bennett Johnston, D-La., is a former senator and former member of the board of directors of ChevronTexaco
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