E85 makes Porter County debut

Less than a year after debuting E85 in Northwest Indiana, Gas City has expanded sales of the gasoline alternative into Porter, LaPorte and Jasper counties.

The chain last month opened E85 pumps at stations in the town of Porter, in Michigan City and in DeMotte, Gas City district manager JoEllen Jostef said.

A Hobart Gas City station in October became the first locally to sell the alternative fuel, made up of 85 percent alcohol and 15 percent petroleum. Gas City stations in Hammond and Dyer followed not along afterward.

The chain remains the only Northwest Indiana gasoline retailer to offer E85, according to the National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition's Web site. However, the Meijer chain, with stores locally in Highland, Merrillville and Michigan City, has committed to selling it at service stations soon.

Consumers trying to save money at the pump are driving sales of about 100 gallons of E85 a day in DeMotte, which goes by the chain's Steel City name, station manager Julie Morgan said.

"They're buying it for the savings as much as for anything else," Morgan said.

Gas City sells E85 for about 20 cents a gallon less than regular gasoline, Jostef said.

Growing consumer awareness of the alternative blend is also helping fuel sales, Jostef said.

When she first started talking about E85, "people thought I had a disease," Jostef said. "Now they know what I'm talking about."

Motorists are better informed about the fuel, and about whether their vehicles are E85-equipped, Morgan said. "The people that have them know that they have them," she said.

The National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition estimates about 5 million U.S. vehicles are equipped to run on E85, but reported last year that many vehicle owners weren't aware of it.

Several automakers, including Ford and General Motors, have ramped up marketing of E85-equipped vehicles in recent months as gas prices hover at about $3 a gallon.

E85 has been marketed as a renewable blend that is kinder to the environment and could decrease the nation's dependency on foreign petroleum.

Consumers mostly are on the lookout for a bargain, the DeMotte station's Morgan said.

"They understand the price of regular fuels is not going to go down," she said.

"It's the price that gets them right off the bat," said Janet Pictor, who manages the Gas City station in Hammond, where E85 sales stand at between 300 and 500 gallons a day.