A top Chevron Corp. executive said the push to reduce the country’s gasoline consumption by as much as one-fifth through the use of ethanol makes it less likely the industry will build new domestic refineries.

“We’ll take all the ethanol that corn growers produce. We’ll use that enthusiastically” as a 10 percent blend with gasoline, Peter Robertson, Chevron’s vice chairman, said in an interview with the Associated Press. He made a similar remark recently in an interview with the Des Moines Business Record.

But Robertson, the No. 2 executive at the second-largest U.S. oil company, said he questions whether a goal of a 20 percent reduction in gasoline use, largely by substituting ethanol, can be achieved by 2017 as President Bush has urged.

Robertson said Chevron supports expanded use of ethanol and is “not in any way threatened” by the corn-based fuel. “But it has implications for investments in the United States in refining,” he acknowledged, because less gasoline will be needed. “Why would I invest in a refinery when you’re trying to make 20 percent of the gasoline supply ethanol?”