BP Amoco, Detroit, announced it is offering lower sulfur gasoline at metropolitan Detroit BP and Amoco stations four years before the EPA deadline.
The availability of the newly formulated fuels means that area vehicle exhaust emissions will be reduced by about seven and a half tons per month, or more than 176,000 pounds per year.
In conjunctions with that announcement, Ford Motor Co. announced BP Amoco's cleaner fuels would be used as the factory fill for premium-gasoline-fueled Ford vehicles that roll off the assembly lines in markets where the low sulfur fuel is available.
Ford expects to have the majority of its assembly plants converted to the reformulated fuels within the next two years.
"We are very pleased to be lowering the sulfur content of our premium grades of BP and Amoco gasoline sold in metro-Detroit to 30 parts-per-million (ppm), which is four years ahead of the EPA 2004 standard," said Doug Ford, BP Amoco chief executive for refining and marketing.
Detroit becomes one of the first markets in the nation to receive the new lower sulfur fuels.
The premium cleaner fuels are available at the pump as Crystal Clear Amoco Ultimate and BP Super 93, and deliver the same performance as the previous formulas.
BP Amoco is not passing any additional cost on to the customer for its new generation of clean fuel, even though there are added production costs.
BP Amoco will spend more than $100 million during the next two years modifying its refining and associated operations to make its cleaner fuels available in cities that are most troubled by smog and pollution, including 40 key cities worldwide by the end of 2000.
Among the other cities currently participating in the cleaner fuels initiative are London, Paris, Warsaw, Altanta and Chicago.