Nunavut may buy special gas for Gjoa Haven

SEAN McKIBBON
Nunatsiaq News

IQALUIT — The Nunavut government is looking at buying special winter gas for the Kitikmeot region after a report on Gjoa Haven’s gasoline complaints suggested that summer-formulated gas may have been partly to blame.

A detailed study of Gjoa Haven’s gasoline by the Ottawa research firm Advanced Engine Technology Ltd. suggests the problems might have been caused by a combination of cold, humid weather, poor snowmobile maintenance and misuse, harmful gasoline additives, and a gasoline that was more of a summer gas than a winter gas.

“We’re looking at buying the gas in the winter, having it stored and then shipped in the summer,” said Brent Boddy, the Department of Public Works’ regional superintendent for the Kitikmeot .

Boddy’s department is also investigating whether it is possible for fuel manufacturers to re-tool their operations in the summer and produce a batch of winter gas just for the Kitikmeot. Traditionally, gasoline has been purchased for the Kitikmeot in the summer time because that is when it is shipped by barge, Boddy said.

Fuel manufacturers tailor their gasoline to meet the needs of their customers, so consequently they sell winter gas in the winter and summer gas in the summer, Boddy said.

What the territory used to do is get the manufacturers to add butane to help engines to start in cold whether, but it doesn’t help the gasoline’s boiling point, Boddy said. Winter gasoline typically has a lower boiling point than summer and so it burns more easily in cold temperatures.

But winter gas produces an effect called vapor lock in the summer and so the territory would also have to purchase summer gas, Boddy said. He said the cost of buying a separate batch of gasoline as well as storing the winter gas during the winter could increase the cost at the pump by five to ten cents for the consumer.

“And we still haven’t found a facility willing to store 2 million litres of fuel for that period of time,” Boddy said.

Boddy says the use of summer gasoline doesn’t explain all of Gjoa Haven’s snowmobile problems, anyway, and he said that the territorial government didn’t do anything last year that it hadn’t done before.

The fuel sold in Gjoa Haven last winter still meets Canadian General Standards Board specifications, Boddy said.

“There are a number of different substances in any gasoline. We set specifications and those specifications are limits. Maybe this gasoline was closer to the limits than other years,” Boddy said.

Other significant problems were identified in the study too, Boddy said. For instance a number of people, upon perceiving a problem in their snow machines, decided to add methyl hydrate gasoline anti-freeze to their fuel.

That’s not a problem for four-stroke engines, but it’s a big no no-no for snowmobiles that have two-stroke engines, he said.

“The problem is they come in these convenient little bottles, and the print on the side of them is so small and hard to read you darn near need a magnifying glass,” he said.

Instead snowmobile users should have been using isopropyl-alcohol-based gasoline anti-freeze. Unfortunately isopropyl alcohol products are harder to find, come in bulky containers, and are almost twice as expensive, Boddy said.

Some people also added octane enhancers to the fuel, but the AET report said the octane levels in the gasoline were adequate.

Increasing the octane beyond manufacturers’ specifications can damage engines, the report said. It also noted that some people were adding naphtha to increase octane, but naphtha has a lower octane rating than gasoline.

Boddy said his department has notified their fuel contractors in the communities about which fuel additives are good and which ones are bad. He also says the co-op and Northern stores have been asked if more isopropyl alcohol anti-freezes can be made available.