The future of Colorado’s ozone-fighting reformulated gasoline is getting a lot more complicated this spring.
To recap:
- The Front Range creates so much toxic ozone that we blew through EPA limits a long time ago.
- One sanction the EPA gave us for these “severe” violations is that in summer months, we must buy “reformulated gas,” or RFG, that creates less ozone-causing vapor.
- Oil companies and Gov. Jared Polis say the benefits of RFG in fighting ozone are minimal, and the refining process costs consumers up to 50 cents more a gallon.
- The EPA said no, the extra cost is only a few cents a gallon. Plus, the EPA said, while Suncor controls 40% of the gasoline market here, other gasoline companies would expand their RFG pipelines and protect consumers through competition.
So Holly Energy wants to do that. The company is seeking a state health department permit to put hundreds of millions more gallons of RFG through their existing tank farm in Henderson, in Adams County.
Problem is, while that could save the Front Range some output of volatile organic compounds that contribute to ozone, Holly Energy’s expansion will also create more carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide than it emits under its existing permit.
Meanwhile, because there’s no current, locally-produced competition for Suncor’s RFG, a gas station trade group says they can show RFG does actually raise Colorado drivers’ prices 20 to 40 cents a gallon by late summer, when local RFG stocks tend to run low.
They also claim some gas stations buy non-RFG gas, in violation of the law. The gas station group supports a bill in the legislature — unlikely to pass this late in a busy session — that would raise the fine for doing that from $500 to $5,000.
What everyone seems to agree on is that if Holly Energy’s RFG plans go forward, it’s Adams County residents that will suffer the most from any environmental impact. Adams County, of course, is already home to the sprawling and often-punished Suncor refinery, as well as countless fueling, trucking, warehousing and other industrial facilities.
The state’s looming approval of the Holly Energy permit “is further proof that we, the marginalized of Adams County, have a special cross to bear,” Commerce City parent Daniel Price said at a public hearing on the permit. “We are the chosen people for a special covenant with the petrol elites: We get the special honor of breathing the fumes of the midstream and downstream businesses who profit off of a product that poisons our children.”
Polis asked the EPA to waive the RFG requirement last year because of consumer cost concerns, a request that was dismissed under the Biden administration’s EPA. The Polis administration said Wednesday that its RFG waiver request is still an open question.
“The governor continues to maintain that a waiver is appropriate, and has reiterated last year’s request to the new EPA administration,” spokeswoman Ally Sullivan said.
Holly Energy, now a subsidiary of HF Sinclair, asked for last week’s public hearing on its expanded permit.
“To support the growing customer demand for reformulated gasoline and ethanol and help the Denver area comply with the Clean Air Act’s mandate to use RFG, HF Sinclair Midstream is requesting a modification to its operating permit to increase throughput. We are not requesting an expansion of the facility,” a spokeswoman said in an email statement. “In response to (Thursday’s) public meeting and through the public comment period, we will work to address questions the community may have and will continue to work with the appropriate regulatory agencies.”
Storing and distributing hundreds of millions more gallons of RFG this year would, however, increase nitrogen oxide emissions at the Henderson site by 9.5 tons a year to 15.5 tons. Carbon monoxide emissions would go from 23.6 tons to 38.7 tons, according to permit summaries from the Air Pollution Control Division. Volatile organic compounds, one of the targets of the EPA’s reformulated gas requirements, would drop by 13.2 tons a year to 162 tons.
Adams County leaders, for their part, wanted more public outreach by Holly Energy and the state health department before the higher fuel volume is approved.
“We are concerned with any increase in emissions that impact air quality and subsequently the health of our residents,” according to comments filed for the public hearing by Renata Trisilawati, community air network coordinator for the Adams County Health Department. “Chronic exposure to nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide, as would happen under this permit modification, are known to aggravate heart and lung conditions, particularly in children and the elderly. Importantly, this request to increase emissions shouldn’t be viewed in a vacuum, but in a holistic way that takes into account the totality of the airshed and the vulnerability of the neighborhoods around this facility, both disproportionately — and cumulatively — impacted.”
State health officials said they will also review and respond to the public comments, the deadline for which they extended to Thursday at 5 p.m., but that they don’t have the power to deny the expanded permit.
“The division will send the draft permit to EPA for their 45-day review,” said Leah Schleifer, a spokesperson for the state Air Pollution Control Division. “As long as a Title V permit meets all state and federal requirements, the division must issue it.”
The Colorado Petroleum Marketers Association agrees that Adams County should not have to bear an even larger fossil fuels burden than it already does because of a misguided EPA policy on reformulated gasoline.
“Candidly, for the state of Colorado, Adams County is like Hercules or Atlas holding the entire fuel distribution network on their shoulders,” the trade group’s executive director Grier Bailey said. “The people in that community are absolutely right.”
The trade group isn’t opposed to Holly Energy’s expanded permit, and in fact thinks it could help consumer prices, Bailey said. But the marketers continue to oppose a “three decades old EPA requirement that has long outlived any useful cost-benefit analysis.”
The trade group watched Front Range fuel prices jump starting late last summer, Bailey said, after the spring inventory of RFG started running low and gas stations had to spend more buying it from farther afield. When the price of bringing in RFG reaches 40 cents or more a gallon above standard gasoline prices, Bailey said, some station operators are tempted to skirt the rules and sell the normal formulation.
Selling the cheaper, nonconforming gas at the higher Front Range market rates elevated by RFG can bring one station more than $30,000 a month in extra revenue, Bailey said. That unfairness prompted the trade group to promote Senate Bill 286, which would raise the fine for selling non-RFG gas to $5,000 per incident from $500.
The marketers are “trying to make sure everybody’s following the rules,” even if the trade association disagrees with the premise of the rules, Bailey said. Requiring RFG is an “archaic” measure when fuels and the cars that burn them are all getting cleaner because of technology improvements, he said.