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I appreciated your story on gas that appeared in the April 23 issue.

However, the MBTE story is all about money, namely, the nefarious price gouging that the oil companies engage in. The chemical methyl tert-butyl ether is a scam. If the government had truly been "pushing" the oil companies to rid their gas of MBTE, as stated in your article, MBTE would have disappeared from gasoline long ago. Is the government truly that impotent, or is this yet another case of the revolving door between the government regulators and those they would regulate?

If retooling their refineries to initially add MBTE to gas wasn't such a tough problem for oil companies, why is it such a hard thing for them to get it out of their gas? Most likely, it isn't -- especially in light of enormous, record profits on the part of oil companies recently.

As I understand it, ARCO, a major oil company, convinced other oil companies to take a waste product that the companies were spending a lot of money on getting rid of and instead call it an additive that would "improve" the octane rating of their gasoline. Reportedly, it does not improve the octane rating.

But now, instead of having to spend money to get rid of that waste product, they're making considerable money off of it -- and horribly polluting the water supplies and air (think: our lungs are mostly water, so the water that's polluted isn't simply groundwater) all over our country.

All for money.

Gas prices? Just the tip of the iceberg of foul play, except now it's hitting us directly and obviously in our wallet.

There are many links on the Internet that can give you a more pertinent, accurate story than what the AAA person told you.

If the oil companies can pull this now-obvious scam, what else will they do or have they done? Something for Americans to think very carefully about -- and to get informed about as soon as possible -- especially in light of the fact that the companies knew that groundwater was being horribly polluted and fought (lobbied) to stop effective laws from being passed to timely protect the American public.

Nan Schweiger

Steamboat Springs