Getting the Lead Out

To boost power and eliminate engine knock, oil companies have been stirring lead into their gasoline for half a century. Last year, in an effort to capitalize on the pollution issue, most major refiners began producing at least one line of lead-free fuel. Despite the public clamor about the environment, however, the strategy is not paying off. The new nonleaded gasolines, dealers complain, are selling at a leaden pace.

Non-and low-lead fuels account for little more than 3% of all gasoline sold, compared with about 44% for leaded premium and 53% for leaded regular. To attract more customers, some companies, such as Atlantic Richfield and Standard Oil of California, have already cut prices by a penny or so a gallon on their nonleaded brands. The response has been negligible. "Lead-free fuels have flopped," says a respected Wall Street petroleum analyst.

Most oilmen agree that the price is the problem; nearly all nonleaded gasolines sell for 1-c- to 4-c- more than regular. Oil-company spokesmen explain that there is a reason for the premium. To keep octane ratings high enough so that gasolines will burn without knocking in Detroit's high-combustion engines, they say, lead must be replaced with more expensive ingredients, like platinum. Some officials of the Government's Environmental Protection Agency suspect that the oil industry may be purposely overpricing low-leads to make them less attractive than leaded products, for which they have invested heavily in refinery equipment. If that is true, the companies are delaying the inevitable. The pollution-control devices that automakers must install on new cars beginning in 1975 will be so delicate that they would be clogged by leaded gasoline. Predicts Robert Hart, executive vice president of Shell, which has spent $80 million installing nonleaded gas pumps and tanks at its stations: "The way the regulatory authorities are moving, it looks as if leaded gasoline will be a thing of the past before the end of the '70s."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.