The home heating oil industry has a long and proud history, and Fuel Oil News has been there supporting it since 1935. It is an industry that has faced many challenges during that time. In its 77th year, Fuel Oil News is doing more than just holding
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/432152
actually becoming issues. And then our role is to inform the membership in gen- eral," he said. The 600 members of CEMA include heating oil dealers, gasoline dis- tributors and affiliated members who sell products and services to the industry "The success and failure of legislative efforts rely on the ability of marketers to become informed and then to act," Herb said. "We've been very fortunate in Connecticut to have really good vol- unteers who have decided that they have to play an active role in protecting and promoting their businesses. With that the future will be better than our past. I'm confident of that. "Our basic job is to be informed and then communicate whatever the issue might be to the membership in general. Then we work with the membership to try to come up with consensus on how those issues should be dealt with. There are times when you have to go nuclear, and there are times when you have to finesse things a bit." Looking ahead to the issues that are likely to dominate in the coming legisla- tive session, Herb said, "We obviously expect a set of issues regarding natural gas expansion. In Connecticut the expansion has not gone as perfectly as the utilities would have hoped for. So we are going to be highly engaged in making sure there are no taxpayer subsidies to try to help advance conversion and expansion." CEMA reported in its newsletter that it filed a lawsuit in October in Hartford Superior Court against the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority alleging both the agency and regulatory board violated state environmental laws in an effort to fast-track Gov. Dan Malloy's energy plan to convert 280,000 homes and businesses from heating oil to natural gas. The lawsuit contends that in pushing through the state's multi-billion dollar energy plan, DEEP and PURA are bla- tantly ignoring state laws which require environmental evaluations of the gas expansion projects. The lawsuit seeks to stop any further implementation of the state's natural gas infrastructure expansion plan until an environmental impact evaluation is pre- pared or until an assessment is made to determine whether an EIE is necessary under state law. (For more on the lawsuit see page 11.) Sulfur standards and biofuel man- dates are important to the industry too, Herb said, and have a connection to fuel oil's fight to be recognized as cleaner and greener than is generally perceived. "Part of the challenge of conversions is the state's assertion that natural gas is cleaner," Herb said. "Now we've reduced heating oil to 500 ppm we're that much closer to being able to say that we're the cleanest fuel in America," Herb said. "It's just a little baby step to 15ppm." State law calls for ULS fuel oil to be 15ppm on July 1, 2018. That low level of sulfur content, and 5% "or better" biocontent, Herb said, "allows us to shine the light back in leg- islators' eyes to say, 'We have the cleanest fuel in America.' "We're going to be engaged in a lot of education during this session, talking about the benefits of that combination," Herb said. "We're going to be very pro active in that regard." Herb added, "We're eagerly antici- pating the outcome of the ASTM effort to increase the amount of bio that can be used in heating oil. That'll be a main driver." A proposed B20 heating oil standard is being evaluated by ASTM, an organization of technical experts and business professionals who develop vol- untary consensus standards. Test results have shown that B20 and lower blends meeting the proposed standard "will perform as well—if not better—than conventional heating oil," Steve Howell, chairman of the ASTM Biodiesel Task Force has said. www.fueloilnews.com | FUEL OIL NEWS | DECEMBER 2014 25 BUSINESS OPERATIONS l F O N