Weary of gas prices, drivers turning to illegal veggie oil

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Aug 17, 2008 | by Laura Hancock Deseret News

Two years ago, Blair was involved in trying to mediate a dispute in Utah between the people who make biodiesel and SVO fuel, and grease-collection and rendering companies that use grease to enrich animal feed and trade it on commodities markets. The issue was brought to the Salt Lake Valley Health Department, which deals with transporting and disposing of waste.

The companies said the small-time garage refiners weren't obeying health regulations, and some garage refiners were even stealing the oil from restaurants. As a result, it is now illegal to collect grease from restaurants in Salt Lake County without obtaining a liquid hauling permit, which requires haulers have general liability insurance.

"It's really geared to businesses and commercial, and I realize there are some hobbyists, and we need to work on a policy to deal with that," says Brian Bennion, deputy director of the Salt Lake Valley Health Department.

Blair says the biodiesel- and SVO-making community has gone underground as a result of the Salt Lake Valley Health Department's regulations. "Word got around real quick: Don't collect oil in Salt Lake County," Blair said.

High demand, high risk

Ron Tribe of North Ogden has struggled to obtain waste vegetable oil, which he wanted in order to make biodiesel for his pickup.

"That's the tough part now: There's so much competition for the used vegetable oil," Tribe says. "We were doing little small cafes, but now even the big collection agencies have signed a long-term contract with them."

Tribe estimates it costs 80-85 cents a gallon to produce biodiesel, minus the labor. He had been making just enough to fill up a portion of his truck's tank. He topped it off with Chevron diesel.

"We had a lot of confidence in the recipe and our methods," he says. "We just wanted baby steps, if I could use that term. The first batch, we did B10. Then B12, then B50. Then we lost our source for the oil."

With his vegetable-oil sources drying up and the legal ramifications of making garage biodiesel, Tribe has stopped making it. "I wanted to do the right thing, to be law-abiding," he says. "It turned out to be so much more work and hassle than it was worth."

Berk Tuttle, owner of Taggart's Grill in Morgan County, gets phone calls on a weekly basis from people looking for waste vegetable oil. "We get people begging us," he says. "In contrast, we used to have to pay people to get it less than a year ago."

Tuttle purchases 115 pounds of vegetable oil a week, and for the past five months, an Ogden resident has turned the waste oil into biodiesel. However, that arrangement may not last for long. Tuttle is considering purchasing a diesel pickup and filling up with biodiesel. "It would be free fuel for me," he says.

But it's against state tax law to burn biodiesel without paying fuel taxes, says Utah State Tax Commission spokesman Charlie Roberts, and if drivers make the fuel in a garage, they must pay, too. For each gallon of gasoline purchased, the federal gasoline tax is 18.4 cents and 24.4 cents for diesel, according to the Energy Information Administration. In Utah, gas and diesel are taxed an additional 24.5 cents a gallon.