LOG NEWS SERVICE -- The federal Environmental Protection Agency said it will wait until this fall to decide whether U.S. engines -- including boat engines -- can handle higher concentrations of ethanol in gasoline.

Photo by: David J. Shuler Fuel Concerns -- Boaters are wondering what effect an EPA decision on allowing up to 15-percent blends of ethanol in gasoline would have on existing boat engines, fuel system components and tanks.

The agency had been expected to decide this month whether to increase the maximum allowable ethanol blend from 10 to 15 percent, in response to a strong lobbying effort from Growth Energy, a consortium of ethanol producers originally led by Gen. Wesley Clark.

The EPA said June 17 that initial tests on 15-percent Ethanol blends “look good” and should be completed by the end of September. A decision will come after the Energy Department completes the testing of the higher blend on vehicles built after 2007.

The ethanol industry has maintained that a 15 percent ethanol blend in motor fuel (E-15) will not harm the performance of car engines. But marine industry groups oppose an EPA waiver for E-15 on the grounds the blend will cause irreparable harm to boats. They have called on the agency to do extensive testing on marine engines before approving E-15, so that the decision would be based on sound science, not politics.

The National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA) said that although there have been cases where E-10 gasoline has negatively and significantly affected recreational marine engines and fuel systems, it did not oppose the use of ethanol blended at 10 percent or lower levels in gasoline.

However, the NMMA said, increasing the ethanol content in gasoline above that level would be an entirely different story. The EPA, it said, has recognized in its determination that E-15 is not “substantially similar” to E-10.

“For the marine sector as with all other engine manufacturing sectors, one of the most substantial concerns with any fuel change is the enormous and diverse array of nearly 17 million legacy marine products currently operating in the United States -- and those boats, engines, and fuel systems currently being manufactured -- none of which has been designed, calibrated or certified to be compatible with any gasoline containing more than 10 percent ethanol by volume,” the NMMA said, in a statement.

Pro-ethanol lobbyists immediately expressed disappointment with the delay. Tom Buis, president of Growth Energy, the group that filed the original petition for the increase, used the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as an argument for higher blends of ethanol in fuel, in a letter to President Barack Obama June 17.

“With fossil fuels getting dirtier, costlier and riskier to extract, as we are witnessing with the epic catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, now is the time we should move on expanding the production and consumption of clean, renewable fuels like ethanol,” Buis wrote.

This is the second time the EPA has announced a delay in its decision on increasing the allowable ethanol level in fuel. The agency pushed the decision to June last December, saying further testing was needed.

-- A report from the Associated Press was used in this story