Since early this year, we have been telling fuel marketers that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will announce they’ve got another $100 million in Higher Blends Infrastructure Incentive Program (HBIIP) grants available for station owners and operators who want to sell fuels with blends above 10 percent ethanol – in most cases, E15 and E85. I’m going out on a limb here, because as of the time this…

Come on, man. Of almost 8 billion people on the planet, almost all 8 billion couldn’t care less about selling E15 and will never come to this site or read this article. But here you are. Heck, you might even be here again… looking at E15 like a little kid looks at puppy in the pet shop window. You think E15 could be a good opportunity for your c-store or gas station, but for whatever reason,…

Last month, the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) and the Society of Independent Gasoline Marketers of America (SIGMA) both sent letters to EPA asking the agency to allow the sale of E15 year-round to “provide much-needed price relief at the pump while enhancing America’s energy security and improving gasoline’s emissions characteristics.” Congress granted EPA emergency waiver authority…

If you’re a retail station owner who watched this year’s Super Bowl, somewhere between the fifth and seventh electric car commercial, you may have broken out in a cold sweat, wondering why you haven’t noticed all these cars and trucks and how you’re going to pay for the equipment you’ll need to “refuel” the vehicles of the future – since they appear to be rapidly becoming the vehicles of the present.

If…

With all the talk in political circles and every kind of media about future electrification, and low carbon and zero carbon emission vehicles, there must be a lot of questions going through retail fuel location owners’ and operators’ heads. Questions like, how will I sell lower-carbon fuel? What's it going to cost for me to market lower carbon fuels? When can I start offering lower-carbon fuels?

Well,…

In January of this year, the ethanol industry celebrated the 10-year anniversary of EPA’s waiver approving blends of up to 15 percent ethanol in all cars and light trucks model years 2001 and newer. The oil industry celebrated the 10-year anniversary of filing their first lawsuit against EPA’s E15 approval a few minutes later.

Since the Renewable Fuel Standard was first enacted back in 2005,…

Recent fuel industry news has included a heavy rotation of sob stories from small “merchant” refiners and larger oil companies that own larger, outdated, inefficient refineries, bleating about their woes being caused by the Renewable Fuels Standard, and more specifically, high RIN prices. As a fuel retailer, you’ve no doubt heard some of this whining and figured somehow, like everything else refiners…

ACE's Market Development will be taking part in our first in-person petroleum marketer trade show in 16 months when we set up the booth at the Southwest Fuel and Convenience Expo in Fort Worth, Texas, June 6-8. Five other “non-virtual” trade shows are on the books for the remainder of 2021.

These conferences and tradeshows are important for us to share the latest information about storing…

Do you really want to offer unleaded E15 to your customers? I mean, if cost were no object, would you like to at least have the option to offer higher octane unleaded E15 – usually selling for about a nickel a gallon less than the traditional lowest priced 10 percent ethanol blend sold everywhere? If so, good news. The cost of offering unleaded E15 (or unleaded88 or regular88, or whatever…

One of the greatest frustrations I’ve had over the past 20+ years of helping fuel marketers add higher ethanol to their product slate has been trying to convince station owners they really, truly, not just saying this because I’m an ethanol guy, can store and sell E15 using their existing equipment. The anti-ethanol misinformation campaign, which convinced station owners E15 required all new fueling…