Interesting, Don. I recall an article in the Arizona Republic about a year ago concerning gas prices. It pointed out that here in the southwest, much of the rise in gas prices is due to the fact that we use close to a dozen tailored "recipes" for gasoline. There is a federally-mandated summer mix and winter mix, of course, but there are also a bunch of state-mandated variations on these mixes. Arizona has at least two special mixes, one for urban areas (Phoenix and Tucson) and one for rural areas. California has several mixes, which are not the same as any of the Arizona mixes. New Mexico has at least one special mix. Colorado, of course, uses a lot of 85 octane, which is rare outside Colorado. And so on and so forth. And it is all complicated by the fact that most of the southwest is supplied by a single pipeline (Google up Kinder-Morgan for details), that runs from Texas, across NM and AZ to southern California. The pipeline can carry only one mix at a time, of course, so it pumps one mix to one destination for a week, then has to switch to another mix for another destination, and so on. Some of the ultimate tweaking of the mix is done at the storage tank farm - but a lot is done at the point of origin in Texas. No wonder gas is expensive! There was actually talk last summer (when gas was spiking past $1.75 a gallon!) about suspending some of the mix laws until things calmed down.
I would hope that the elimination of MTBE will at least simplify the recipe book. I'm certainly not a petrochemist, but I would think that something on the order of 4 different recipes would be enough to satisfy everyone. We'll see.
Bill
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