Now in the Bay Area: the anti-gas station

The smell of french fries wafts from the local 'gas' station. But it's not the snacks sold inside, it's the fuel.

By Ben Arnoldy | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the April 30, 2007 edition

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With gas over $3.50 a gallon here in California, many station owners must be relieved to have pumps with credit card readers. Better to cut out all interaction with the sullen customers.

But Jennifer Radtke has just one ancient pump, prices a few pennies above her competition, and lines that occasionally stretch over an hour long in this quiet corner of Berkeley. Yet customers clearly love the place, doubling the business each year and making possible a major expansion this summer.

How? She offers biodiesel, an alternative fuel that soothes so many environmental and political bugaboos it may some day edge out lattes as the Left Coast's favorite liquid.

"Everything about [biodiesel] is really incredible. It's nontoxic, nonflammable, it's made from vegetable oil," enthuses Ms. Radtke, who jointly owns and runs BioFuel Oasis with five other women. For her, biodiesel is about a feeling of independence more than politics. Oh, and it "smells great."

The fumes around BioFuel Oasis evoke French fries or donuts – foods that may be for sale at some gas stations, but somehow wouldn't fit here among the organic tangerine juice and the local artwork that proclaims, "Trees are wiser than you think."

As much as BioFuel Oasis fosters an alternative, anti-gas station community, their product is rapidly joining the mainstream. It's the fastest growing alternative fuel in the nation, with production tripling last year, according to the National Biodiesel Board. Their website, biodiesel.org, lists roughly 1,000 retailers, most of them in middle America.

The fuel can be put safely into many diesel vehicles without modifications, though cold weather or older parts may require the use of biodiesel that's blended with petroleum diesel.

For Oasis customers, one of the biggest selling points is that the fuel comes from a potato chip factory in southern California, not the Middle East.

"Pretty much every time I went to buy gas, I thought about what was going on in Iraq, and I was feeling awful," says Aimee Wells, as she fuels up her VW Gulf, a diesel car she bought last year so she could switch to veggie power. A bumper sticker on it reads, "Biodiesel: no war required."

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