with a simple definition of below cost, we will support a national
ethanol mandate.
So we sort a struck this deal and they said Sen. Daschle can't
introduce this amendment, so can you go find a senator to
introduce it and we found Max Cleland from Georgia and he
introduce the amendment. But boy oh boy did we set off a bomb
in the industry.
It got really crazy and it got personal and there was a lot of
division between PMAA and NACS and SIGMA and API and I
do still to this day regret how I went about that. I was probably
moving too quickly and forced people to overreact or underreact
and eventually had to go back to Sen. Daschle and say we can't
do it. There's going to be too much blood and carnage about this,
because the industry was very divided. I wish I'd been a little bit
more strategic and I hadn't really laid the groundwork with the
other associations.
FON: I was following RFS through a lot of that time and there
was a lot of resistance and it seemed deadlocked, but all of a sud-
den the deal was done. How did that come about?
GILLIGAN: Four letters—MTBE. The law required
reformulated gasoline to have an oxygenated additive, and
there were only two: ethanol and MTBE. The refiners wanted
to get rid of MTBE as quickly as possible, and the only way
to do that was to remove that oxygenate mandate which the
ethanol industry was not the mood to let happen. So basically,
the refiners went to the ethanol guys and said we will agree to
blend X gallons of ethanol if you agree to get rid of the oxygen-
ate mandate.
One of the complaints from some refiners today is that this is
not fair, I'm an obligated party and I have to blend this stuff and
we have petroleum marketers out there blending and they are
not out obligated. Not to be a smart alec, but I would say look,
we didn't volunteer to do this; you guys did. You guys agreed to
do all this blending and we were not even allowed in the room
26 JUNE 2015 | FUEL OIL NEWS | www.fueloilnews.com
BUSINESS OPERATIONS
It got really crazy and it got
personal and there was a lot of division
between PMAA and NACS and SIGMA
and API and I do still to this day regret
how I went about that.
