Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) and the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) implementation of gasoline octane certification and posting requirements.
GAO found that: (1) FTC and EPA did not monitor compliance with octane posting requirements or use octane test results to prosecute violators; (2) there were no federal controls to ensure that gasoline octane postings were accurate; (3) over 9 percent of the gasoline sampled between 1979 and 1987 misstated octane ratings by more than one-half point; and (4) one-time tests of gasoline octane levels in states that did not have an octane testing program revealed that mislabelling ranged from 22 to 53 percent. GAO also found that: (1) there was more potential for mislabelling to occur at distributors or retail stations than at refineries, pipelines, or bulk terminals because those locations lacked extensive quality control programs to test octane ratings; (2) FTC limited octane ratings to traditional gasoline fuels and excluded newer gasoline-alcohol blends from posting requirements; and (3) legislation authorized only limited civil remedies and penalties for mislabelling violations.
