Brockwell, who addressed the annual convention of the Wisconsin Petroleum Marketers & Convenience Store Association Tuesday in the Wisconsin Dells, [image-nocss] told the newspaper that $4 gasoline caused both businesses and individuals to conserve and that conservation, which hasn't been abandoned despite lower prices, reduced demand and helped bring down pump prices.
Commercial users have increased efficiency, and people are driving less because of conservation and high unemployment, Brockwell said. Current daily U.S. crude oil consumption of 18.5 million barrels a day is down from 22 million barrels a day at its peak, he said.
"I don't think there's been a full accounting yet of how much demand has been lost," he said. "The price of oil eventually will go back up, but I think that's a year or more away."
While conservation is helping reduce prices, Brockwell said it will take a lot longer to implement President Barack Obama's goal of reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil. He said obstacles to new efficient or alternative fuel vehicles are that it takes about 15 years to completely turn over the nation's fleet of about 240 million cars and the country has an infrastructure of 120,000 gasoline stations, the report said.
"I do think this is a generation away from anything significant," he said.
In Wisconsin, Brockwell said raising state gasoline taxes would be better than a proposed oil franchise tax, which he said could cause oil companies to pull business out of Wisconsin to avoid the tax.
Meanwhile, a glimpse of an alternative fuel station was unveiled in late March during the annual trade show sponsored by The Michigan Petroleum Association/Michigan Association of Convenience Stores (MPA/MACS), reported The Grand Rapids Press. The display station is a smorgasbord of fuel options: biodiesel, compressed natural gas, E85, electricity, hydrogen and propane.
It was designed to show MPA/MACS members what is coming down the pike in terms of cleaner and more efficient fuels, Mark Griffin, president of the organization, told the newspaper
Bringing some alternative fuels to market will depend on overcoming technical or economic issues, added Tom Fehsenfeld, president of Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Crystal Flash Energy. "A lot of our members are trying to get involved with alternative fuels and understand them so if they take off, they'll know how to sell them," he told the paper. He heads the organization's alternative fuel committee which brought in the station display.
Installing a E-85 pump can cost between $15,000 and $20,000, said the report. But the station owner is likely to sell just 50 gallons a day of E-85 compared to 3,500 gallons of gasoline.
Fuel demand will be heavily influenced by what direction automakers head in designing and building alternative-fuel vehicles. And that's hard to predict in a depressed economy that has two of the Detroit Three staring down bankruptcy, the report said.
"For us, it's important to have a display to show what there could be in the future. Which of these will be here, we don't know," said Griffin. So far, E-85 and versions of biodiesel are the most available alternative fuels, said the report. While E-85 trails gasoline by 30 cents a gallon, it gets fewer miles per gallon. Biodiesel generates lower admission than gasoline, but the price is a nickel higher a gallon, Fehsenfeld said.
"Ultimately, we are going to sell what the customer wants," said Griffin.
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