TACOMA — The first Air Force cross-country trip powered by a mixture of synthetic and traditional jet fuels is set to depart Monday from McChord Air Force Base.
Col. Frank Rechner, the mission support group commander with McChord’s 62nd Airlift Wing says the flight is another step in the Air Force’s effort to reduce its dependence on foreign oil.
“It will look a lot like every other takeoff,” said Col. Frank Rechner, the mission support group commander with McChord’s 62nd Airlift Wing, told The News Tribune newspaper. “But it’s historic.”
In 2003, the Air Force spent $2.6 billion on jet fuel; by 2006 that number had climbed to $5.8 billion. The Air Force burns half the fuel consumed by the Department of Defense each year.
With nearly 6,000 airplanes going through 7 million gallons of fuel a day, a $10 rise in the per-barrel price of oil reportedly costs the Air Force $600 million a year.
The service is looking at alternatives such as natural coal and coal converted to liquid fuel to avoid the pressures of rising oil prices.
The mixture to be tested in Monday’s flight is a 50-50 blend of natural gas-based fuel and standard aviation fuel.
The Air Force bought 290,000 gallons of the synthetic fuel from Shell Houston, at a cost of $3.41 per gallon, said Paul Bollinger Jr., special assistant to the assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations, environment and logistics.
The fuel was produced at a Shell plant in Malaysia.
“We expect the price to be significantly less as greater volumes are purchased in the future,” Bollinger said.
A McChord spokeswoman said the cost of traditional jet fuel was about $2.31 a gallon this week; that figure changes weekly.
The Air Force expects to certify all of its C-17s to fly with the new mixture by next May, and its entire fleet of aircraft cargo jets, fighters, tankers and bombers by 2011.
About the same time, the Air Force has set a goal to buy half of the fuel for its flights in the continental United States “from domestic sources producing synthetic fuel in an environmentally friendly manner,” Bollinger said. That amounts to about 400 million gallons.
McChord C-17s are part of the U.S. airlift fleet that uses the majority of the fuel consumed by the Air Force, flying supply and logistics missions from U.S. bases to the war zones in Afghanistan, Iraq and to U.S. installations elsewhere around the world.
The local C-17s go through about 170 million gallons of fuel every year, consumption that in fiscal year 2007 cost more than $382 million, said Capt. Suzanne Ovel, a base spokeswoman.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
