I used to use Husky quite a bit last year. I got BCAA dollars with all my fill ups, and they had the cheapest touchless car wash around in Richmond. They still do actually. They also had the “Midgrade Gas for the Price of Regular Gas”. That meant at Husky, you could get 90 octane, for the price of 87. I had thought this was to combat the blending of Ethanol in the gas, which usually degrades gas mileage. You couldn’t avoid Ethanol blended gas at Husky/Mohawk, because they blend it in all grades of gasoline, even premium. Fine by me, both my car’s seemed to idle a little smoother running at 90 octane.

Read on to see how Husky did the 90 Octane for the price of regular, and why it left BC.

I eventually got a Chevron credit card, because I noticed whenever I use my credit card for Pay at the Pump, depending how the pump checks the available credit, they could preauthorize anything from $1.00 to $100.00 on my card, taking away from my credit limit for about a week, until the gas station posts the transactions, so I have been using Chevron exclusively since September.

The last weekend on February, I put a temporary permit on my Explorer, to take effect at midnight the day I headed up to Vedder Mountain for some race car work and some rock crawling. After midnight, my local Chevron closes, so I headed to the Husky.

Now, you can only get 87, 89, 91, and 94, and it is all blended with 10% Ethanol. I found this post at RedFlagDeals. Here’s why:

I hope the following information will answer any questions you may have in regards to the change in octane.

Husky has proudly provided ethanol-blended gasoline to our customers for many years and most recently was able to provide ethanol-blended 90 Octane fuel at the price of our competitors’ regular gasoline, which had no ethanol.

Effective Jan. 1, Husky’s ethanol-blended 90 Octane fuel dropped to 87 octane, still blended with ethanol, in some parts of BC. Also, in many of those same jurisdictions (much of the Lower Mainland, Southern Interior and Northern BC), our mid-grade fuel – 92 Octane is no longer available. We will continue provide our premium 94 Octane ethanol-blended fuel at certain locations across the province.

Our ethanol-blended Mother Nature’s Fuel is produced by injecting ethanol into finished gasoline. The addition of ethanol increases the octane level in gasoline by about 3 octane numbers and therefore, regular gasoline at 87 octane, became ethanol-blended gasoline at a 90 octane level.

In 2010, the federal government and the BC and Alberta governments will mandate an annual average of 5% ethanol in gasoline for all producers (Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario already have similar mandates in place).

To respond to the mandated change, refineries will produce a lower octane blendstock– to accommodate ethanol blending. In short, to meet mandates requirements and continue to produce an 87 octane gasoline, major refiners are instead, are opting to produce a lower octane blendstock that, when blended with ethanol, becomes 87 octane ethanol-blended gasoline.

The change means that in the affected jurisdictions, 87 Octane (“regular”) gasoline is now ethanol-blended, where previously this was not always the case. Unfortunately, the change also means that Husky can no longer provide our customers with the advantage of our ethanol-blended 90 Octane gasoline at the price of our competitor’s regular 87 gasoline as their 87 regular gasoline now also contains ethanol.

This new mandate was brought to us late in the year and, though we are in the process of updating our signs and informational materials, the changes will not be complete until later this month.

In the meantime, we apologize for any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused.

So, the government mandates 5% ethanol in all gasoline. Husky is now still doing 10% in every octane level, still prepared for the future I suppose. This now means that Chevron is now blending ethanol in all their gas too. This gets interesting. The 94 octane “Supreme Plus” at Chevron still contains absolutely no ethanol! Chevron is putting their ethanol blend in the lower grades, and leaving their top tier gas free of Ethanol.

This might justify the use of Supreme Plus now, as it technically should boost mileage and power. Remember, a 10% ethanol blend raises octane levels 3 points. So Husky is essentially selling 84, 86, 88, and 91.

The only pure gasoline now left in BC is Chevron Supreme Plus. Is it worth the extra money? If you have noticed a mileage decrease after January 01st, then crunch the numbers and find out. It might be the same or benefit you. It should benefit your engine too! Plus, here in BC, you can earn Save-on-more points, which I have gotten quite a few BC Ferries rides and gift certificates.