Copyright 1999 Federal Document Clearing House, Inc.
Federal Document Clearing House Congressional Testimony
May 18, 1999
SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY
LENGTH: 715 words
HEADLINE:
TESTIMONY May 18, 1999 JAMES M. INHOFE SENATE ENVIRONMENT AND
PUBLIC WORKS EPA'S PROPOSED SULPHUR STANDARD
BODY:
Statement of Senator Jim Inhofe, Chairman
Clean Air Subcommittee Hearing on Sulfur Levels in
Gasoline Tuesday May 18, 1999 Today is the first of two
hearings this week on the EPA's proposed new standards for
sulfur levels in gasoline. The sulfur standard
is part of the new proposed Tier Two Auto Emission standards. These standards
were proposed on May 1st and are expected to go final by the end of this year. I
said expected to go final by the end of this year because the EPA has a lot of
work ahead of itself if they plan on accomplishing this. For over a year now
this Subcommittee and my Office have raised a number of issues to the EPA
regarding the sulfur standards, and for the most part they have
ignored our issues and concerns in their proposed rule. The most they have done
is to ask for comments on a few of the issues, they did not offer solutions or a
real proposal. This is most evident in the case of the small refinery issue. At
this point I would like to note a few of my concerns. I hope that today's
witnesses can address these issues, and on Thursday I hope to hear a response
from the EPA. 1. Small Refiners - The EPA decided to provide very limited relief
to small refiners based upon the number of employees of the entire corporation,
not just the refinery or energy side of a company. They choose 1500 employees as
the cut-off. This ignores companies which have other non-refinery related
businesses such as hotels and convenience stores. There is also one company with
1550 employees. These examples were given to the EPA months ago. They also
ignored defining the size of a Refiner by production volume, which has been used
by the Department of Energy and is much more reliable when determining the
available resources for capital improvements. 2. Small Refineries - In addition
to small companies the EPA has ignored small facilities owned by larger
corporations. The same economies of scale that a small company much consider
when deciding whether to make capitol investments apply to small facilities when
owned by large corporations. When a large corporation owns several large
facilities and one 30-40 thousand barrel-a-day facility, they will be unlikely
to spends the millions of dollars in capital investments on that small facility.
The effect will be the closing of many small facilities owned by the majors.
While this probably will not be life or death for the majors, it will be life or
death for the local employees and in particular the small towns where these
refineries are located. This was also pointed out to the EPA and ignored. 3.
Phase-in Time - The EPA is phasing the automobile standards in over four years
starting in 2004, yet all but the smallest 18 refineries will be forced to
undergo their large investments well before 2004, and in order to undertake what
limited relief the small companies have will probably require significant
investments by them as well. Can this be done in a less disruptive manner,
perhaps with the same lead-in time given to the auto manufacturers? 4. Energy
Supply - because of the effect on small refiners and small refineries and the
lead-in time for major equipment changes, we can expect to see energy supply
disruptions. One example is the availability of the equipment. For the EPA's
preferred technology there are only two vendors and to date they have only
installed the equipment at one refinery. Now the EPA and State permitting
process alone takes one to two years to complete. The EPA has promised to
shorten this time to six months yet they have requested no additional employees
or funds in next year's budget to get this done. This means that either the
permit process will not change or permits for other projects and industries will
get longer as employees and resources are pulled off to work on this. These are
just some of the issues that I have raised to the Administration over the last
year which have not been addressed in the proposed rule. Because of their
failure to deal with these hard issues in the proposal I have decided to move
forward with legislation which will address sulfur levels in
fuel. I intend to use the hearings this week to help gather information before
we starting drafting the legislation. I look forward to hearing from today's
witnesses.
LOAD-DATE: May 19, 1999