O’Brien: Retailers, Prime the Pump Set the Stage for E15 Adoption

by Matt Thompson (Ethanol Producer Magazine) For retailers who are still looking to add E15 to their product mix, Growth Energy’s vice president of market development, Mike O’Brien believes there’s no better place to learn about and ask questions than the Prime the Pump program.

Retailers who have already made the commitment to offer E15 have benefitted from the expertise available from Prime the Pump’s partners, O’Brien said. Of the 1,800 retail sites currently offering E15, O’Brien said Prime the Pump has been involved with all most all of them. “What that gives you is a depth of expertise that the retailers need and want, and they can’t find elsewhere,” he said. “We have a really great experience base with what it’s going to cost, both if you go with E85 and blender pumps, or if you use pre-blended E15 in your existing sites. We really have probably the strongest experience base on not only how to configure things, but what it’s likely to cost them.”

And with year-round sales of E15 now allowed O’Brien said his Prime the Pump’s efforts toward driving more market availability haven’t slowed. “You’ve still got to have E15 at the retail sites,” he said. “So definitely, we will keep pounding away on the retailers.”

O’Brien said the retailers who work with the Prime the Pump program, helped to get EPA’s RVP rule finalized. “The retailers we worked with, I kind of alluded to the market presence as well as the legislative pressure, but they also brought a lot of pressure to the EPA,” he said, and added that the commercial concerns retailers brought to EPA were an important part of EPA’s decision. And EPA continues to use the data retailers provided. “If you look at the data and the numbers and the information that the EPA’s putting forth now on E15, they’re leaning heavily on the fact that these retailers are selling the product, so they’re quoting a lot of the data that has been in the marketplace because of these retailers,” O’Brien said.

Retailers have also changed the landscape at terminals, O’Brien said. As more retailers offer E15, more suppliers are adding the pre-blended fuel to their mix, he said. READ MORE

Excerpt from Ethanol Producer Magazine: (Mike)Lewis said that despite the increasing demand in California for E85, the number of flex fuel vehicles (FFVs) is a limiting factor. “They are going to go down. It is inevitable,” he said of the manufacture of new FFVs, unless incentives for manufacturing FFVs are restored.

It doesn’t make sense to talk about high-level blends unless FFVs continue to be manufactured, he said, because outside of ethanol advocates, drivers don’t use higher blends in non-flex fuel vehicles. “They need to keep making these flex fuel vehicles,” Lewis said. “If we’ve got a lot of flex fuel vehicles all over the country, we’ve got a lot of ways to go,” he said.

Gard spoke about Bosselman’s experience selling and marketing E15. He said when the company first began to offer the fuel, there wasn’t consistent branding and consumer education about the fuel. “We were doing a huge disservice to our customers,” Gard said. “They simply didn’t know what to do.”

He said as an effort to alleviate confusion among drivers, they launched Boss Fuels, a branding effort. “It’s a simplification of color, of nomenclature, of buttons,” he said. “Our approach is it’s a superior fuel for the road ahead.”

The results were immediate, Gard said, and sales increased. “All we did was brand it and give E15 and give it an identity,” Gard said, adding that E15 has helped the company increase its customer count and average spend at it’s locations. READ MORE