POWER TALK

HIGH PERFORMANCE

HAving been around awhile, living through four or five ditferent gas crunches since it all began back in late 1973, I know that escalating prices at the pumps always put a damper of sorts on motorized recreation, especially boating. What really bends my prop, however, is that we haven’t yet figured out a good way to stabilize the production output and price of this extremely important commodity over the past 27 years. I’m not in favor of “Big Brother” regulating fuel prices or supply, but I would think that by now we (our government) would have come to the realization that a major portion of our economy (and energy supply) shouldn’t be dependent upon a loose confederation of foreign nations that can turn the flow of fuel on or off whenever it suits them.

Call me overly suspicious, but somehow I can’t help but think that much of this recent price hike at

the gas pumps is coming from a few disgruntled U.S. oil companies that are still very peeved about the push to ban MTBE from reformulated gasoline here in the states. About seven or eight years ago, when the federal government decided that gasoline needed another oxygenating agent to help clean up air pollution, the chemical of choice was MTBE, a petroleum by-product that major oil refiners spent millions (maybe billions) of dollars installing new equipment to accommodate.

Today, however, we know a lot more about MTBE, and it’s mostly not good. Although it’s still considered a benefit to cleaner burning gasoline, it also has a very dark side: It’s a known pollutant that has contaminated countless drinking water and ground water resources all across the country. When this fact finally went public in early 1999,

I guess it’s too late—hindsight is always 20-20—but I knew I should have bought those 200 five-gallon plastic gas jugs that were on sale last November at WalMart when I had the chance. If I had filled them when gas was about $1.10 and stored them in my basement, I’d be sitting pretty today (that's assuming I hadn’t blown myself Into another zip code in the meantime).

Now bear with me—I’m writing this column in the first week of March, and you’re probably reading it some
time in early May, so things might have changed in those eight weeks at the gas pumps but probably not. I just dumped ten gallons of 87 unleaded into the old Chevy dually last night and only got back $3.50

B ob Brown has been a

performance-boatIng journalist for 25 years. His own boat racing career began at age 12.

For the past 18 years, he has operated Media DirectIon, an advertising/public relations agency that specializes in the outdoor recreation industry.

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