Oil industry: EPA's reg review plan doesn't go far enough

A plan released last week by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to review dozens of its regulations to ensure they are not overly burdensome does not go far enough, the oil industry said Wednesday.

“The administration needs to go much further if it is serious about getting the American economy on track,” American Petroleum Institute Director of Scientific and Regulatory Affairs Howard Feldman said Wednesday on a conference call with reporters. 

API, the country’s most powerful oil and gas trade group, took aim at two EPA regulations in particular: pending greenhouse gas regulations for stationary sources like power plants and refineries, and upcoming rules setting more stringent ozone standards.

“EPA is in the process of implementing enormously costly regulations on the very businesses that can and will create American jobs while continuing to improve environmental performance,” Feldman said. “We are particularly concerned with the agency’s plans to tighten the ozone standard and implement greenhouse gas controls on industry.”

API says it submitted a 50-page proposal to EPA outlining a series of regulations the agency should reconsider as part of a multi-agency review mandated by President Obama in January to ensure the administration’s rules are not "outmoded, ineffective, insufficient or excessively burdensome.”

But EPA’s review plan, which was released last week along with the plans of more than two dozen federal agencies, does not address API’s concerns about the agency’s climate regulations and ozone standards.

“Those two are our priorities right now,” Feldman said. “These are the things that will actually be stifling jobs the soonest.”

API says the climate regulations — which began phasing in for new and upgraded facilities earlier this year — will result in huge costs to industry, which will be passed on to consumers. In addition, facilities won’t be able to meet more stringent ozone standards, which are based on a January 2010 EPA proposal to lower the National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ozone.

But EPA counters that the regulations are not excessively burdensome and will result in major public health benefits that make up for any cost to industry.

EPA’s review plan identifies 31 regulations that the agency will re-evaluate. The agency will take immediate steps to review 16 of the regulations. The other 15 reviews will take place over a longer period of time.

In the review plan, EPA vowed to “harmonize” a series of vehicle regulations focused on fuel economy labels, as well as fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions standards. The agency also pledged to “eliminate the redundant obligation for many states to require air pollution vapor recovery systems at local gas stations because modern vehicles already have effective air pollution control technologies.”