Automakers warn new ethanol mandate could damage vehicles

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Detroit says it will ruin your engine. The EPA says it's safe. 

Farmers say it's better than foreign oil. Oil companies say it's more expensive than gasoline. 

But as Washington looks to compel refiners to blend more and more ethanol into gasoline, consumers are still left with the basic and critical question -- how much ethanol is safe to put in their cars? 

Automakers warn the government's ethanol mandate could damage vehicles if it continues to grow.

"We just feel that it is not safe for the consumer. It's not safe for their engines," said Charles Drevna, executive president of American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers.

The questions about ethanol arise after Congress first mandated it in 2007. Ninety-six percent of gasoline sold in the U.S. is now 10 percent ethanol, a high-octane fuel derived from corn. But under that bill and rules favored by the Environmental Protection Agency, refiners are now being forced to blend up to 15 percent ethanol into gasoline sold at stations around the U.S.

The auto industry, though, says E-15 -- as the blend is known -- corrodes pumps, fuel lines and injectors. And manufacturers say they won't cover damages caused by the higher blend.

The American Automobile Association agrees.   

"Ninety-five percent of today's cars are not suited for E-15 based on what people who make those cars say," said AAA CEO Robert Darbelnet.

The ethanol lobby claims automakers and refiners are overreacting.

"E-15 has been sold in this country for the past nine months with no issues whatsoever. This is a lot of hysteria that's being driven by the oil companies," said Bob Dinneen, head of the Renewable Fuels Association.

While there have been no issues reported so far, the new blend has only been sold in a handful of stations in the Midwest. But refiners are mandated to use 13.8 billion gallons ethanol this year requiring the 15 percent blend. The EPA says it is safe for cars built after 2001, but acknowledges it is inappropriate for boats and small motors, including lawnmowers and chainsaws.

Automakers advise new owners not to fill up on E-15 and say doing so may violate warranty terms, leaving customers to pay costly repair bills. Toyota and Lexus even placed warning labels on gas caps and owner's manual instructions caution not to use E-15.

"We think ethanol is a pretty good product, up to a point," said Drevna. "But when Congress mandates such massive quantities that we can't put into the fuel system, that the autos and the lawnmowers people and the marine manufacturers are saying 'We won't warranty, we won't put this in our engines, there is a problem'."

Ethanol supporters dispute that and claim studies back them up. Ethanol blends of 25 percent have been used for years in Brazil with no ill effects on the same cars sold in the U.S.

"We support what the EPA did because we know that E-15 is safe for the vehicles for which they have approved," said Dinneen."Let the marketplace decide. Let consumers that have a newer vehicle, that want to use E-15, give them the choice. If they want to use E-15 because it is lower cost, because it's domestically produced, because it's the only thing we have that's going to reduce greenhouse gases, then they ought to have that choice."

After a lengthy comment period, the EPA is expected to decide soon whether or not to relax the blend mandate. Some lawmakers are considering similar legislation should the EPA fail to do so. Right now, it is a lobbying war pitting farmers against oil refiners and automakers.

"Look, this is pretty simple," said Dinneen. "It's about a battle for the barrel. Ethanol, renewable fuels, have been phenomenally successful over the last several years, and we are now 10 percent of the U.S. motor fuel market. And the refiners are saying, 'no more'. They don't want to see E-15 succeed. I think the American public still understands the value in reducing our dependence on imported oil and seeing more domestic renewable fuels used."

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The terrible damage being done to UNHCR's reputation

The UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees (“UNHCR”) has long boasted impressive credentials in carrying out its important humanitarian work. Winning Nobel Peace Prizes in 1954 and 1981 for protecting and assisting refugees, UNHCR typically operates more efficiently and effectively than most other UN agencies. UNHCR’s compelling logo embodies its critical mission, picturing two human hands providing shelter for a refugee.

Now, however, UNHCR’s reputation is being badly damaged by the systemic failure of virtually the entire UN operation in Iraq.  Iranian refugees, members of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (“MEK”), now residents at Camp Liberty, a vandalized, abandoned U.S. military base near Baghdad, have been subject to rocket attacks, forced to live in wretched, unsanitary conditions more like a prison than a refugee camp, and denied their property.

Worse, Martin Kobler, the bureaucrat heading the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (“UNAMI”), acts more like a paid agent of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Iraqi regime and its puppet masters in Iran than a representative of the UN’s member governments.  

UNHCR’s reputation is being badly damaged by the systemic failure of virtually the entire UN operation in Iraq.

Kobler is clearly guilty of what diplomatic circles call “clientitis”:  forgetting who he actually works for, in this case the UN Security Council, not Iraq and Iran. 

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon should have long ago recognized that failing to overrule Kobler, and his indifference to the MEK’s harsh and dangerous treatment, now threatens his own reputation.

In America, the MEK is overcoming an undeserved reputation after being listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the Clinton administration, which erroneously believed that appeasing Tehran’s mullahs would facilitate negotiations over Iran’s nuclear weapons program.  

That mistake was repeated by Secretary of State Rice in 2008, also to appease the ayatollahs.  

By contrast, the U.S. military in Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s overthrow, found the MEK peaceful and cooperative.  The Pentagon placed all residents of Camp Ashraf, their longstanding facility near the Iran-Iraq border, under U.S. protection, which of course disappeared when coalition forces withdrew.

Last year, however, Hillary Clinton correctly removed the MEK from the proscribed list, on the condition that Ashraf’s inhabitants move to Camp Liberty.  Kobler assured the MEK that Liberty’s facilities would be equivalent to Ashraf, and that UNHCR would rapidly process their applications for asylum in third countries.  That has not happened, and as long as these refugees remain in Iraq, they will be subject to threats and deadly attacks.  

Kobler and UNAMI have repeatedly impeded UNHCR’s work, making it a pawn for Tehran’s religious dictatorship to use against the MEK. So doing violates UNHCR’s 1950 founding statute, adopted by UN member governments, which mandates that its work must be “of an entirely non-political character.”  Moreover, neither Kobler nor any other UN bureaucrat has authority to compromise UNHCR’s mandate, reaffirmed last July by the Security Council in Resolution 2061, which specifically requires UNAMI to work “in coordination with” UNHCR, not as its master.  

UNHCR was intended precisely to interpose itself in circumstance such as these. By definition,refugees face hostility and the likelihood of retribution from authorities in the country they are fleeing.  And it is frequently true that refugees are unwelcome and persecuted in their countries of first asylum. The fact that Iraq’s al-Maliki regime is under the thrall of Iran here only heightens the need for UNHCR to assert its unique mandate.

Unfortunately, however, High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres has been unable or unwilling to uphold his responsibility to protect and assist the refugees, either at Camp Liberty or by finding them asylum in third countries.  

Ironically, Guterres has asked for significantly greater funding for UNHCR’s work on MEK issues in 2013, which is hard to understand given how little UNHCR is actually doing on behalf of the 3,000-plus asylum-seekers involved.

This dispute may initially sound like simply another exercise in bureaucratic turf-fighting within the UN system, but the global implications are actually far broader. If Iran and Iraq’s al-Maliki regime succeed in intimidating and impeding UNHCR, thereby politicizing its work, the consequences risk devastating the UN’s ability to provide impartial international assistance.  

All UN members should be alarmed at this prospect, since no one can predict where UNHCR or other UN humanitarian agencies will be needed next. With the UN’s political decision-making bodies already largely dysfunctional, it would be a profound loss for the UN’s humanitarian agencies to suffer the same fate.

Moreover, non-governmental organizations (“NGO’s”) which provide humanitarian assistance should also be appalled at Kobler’s damage to UNHCR’s mandate, and the damage the agency is doing to itself.  Whether or not a particular NGO does refugee work, is present in the Middle East, or tries to avoid politicization, NGO’s generally will find their humanitarian status jeopardized by the gross politicization that Iran and Iraq are wreaking.

Clearly, High Commissioner Guterres has to stand up on his hind legs and demand that UNHCR be allowed to provide protection and assistance to the refugees at Camp Liberty and rapidly process their asylum requests, no matter what Kobler, al-Maliki or Tehran’s ayatollahs want.  UN members and NGO’s should likewise insist that UNHCR be allowed to operate according to its mandate, and urge Secretary General Ban not to turn a blind eye.  

And the U.S. Congress, in a time of incredibly tight budgets for both domestic and military programs, should look very carefully at what the UN system as a whole is doing  --  and more importantly failing to do  --  in Iraq. If nothing else works, restricting American contributions to UN agencies always gets their attention.

John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is a Fox News contributor. He is a senior fellow at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.

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