U.S. Air Act Casts Doubt on Success of State Clean Car Plan : Pollution: Regulators say oil firms must sell clean fuels, not just make them available. California’s program to require cleaner cars may ride on the interpretation.

The success of a far-reaching plan to place millions of ultra-clean cars on the road in California was thrown into doubt Thursday when a dispute erupted between state air pollution authorities and the oil industry over a key provision of the new federal clean air act signed Thursday by President Bush.

California air pollution regulators insisted that the new federal law requires oil companies to sell specific amounts of the clean fuels.

Oil companies are strenuously challenging that interpretation, saying the legislation only requires that alternative fuels be “made available.”

The distinction could be important to the success of an ambitious program approved last September by the California Air Resources Board to force auto makers to begin building cleaner cars by 1997. Under the plan, every new car sold in the state by the year 2000 must be from 70% to 100% less polluting than cars in 1994.

But there is concern that if alternative fuels such as methanol are not priced competitively, the clean air effort could be undermined, especially in the early years when many new cars may be designed to run on either gasoline or the cleaner fuels.

“I think the (federal) law is clear . . . that the provisions that pertain specifically to California and that describe California’s (clean vehicle) pilot program . . . include what we consider a sales mandate,” state ARB spokesman Bill Sessa said Thursday.

ARCO Products Co. President George Babikian sees the new federal law another way.

“There isn’t any sales quota in it. I fail to see how there can be any sales quota, and I’m reading it,” Babikian said.

The law does not specifically mention sales mandates or quotas but certain phrases having to do with production and distribution could be interpreted as requiring them.

“If Congress wanted a mandate, it would have appeared in there--’mandated sales’--without any weasel words in there,” Babikian said.

Babikian’s view appears to be supported by remarks published in the Congressional Record Nov. 2 by Rep. Jack M. Fields (R-Tex.), a member of the House-Senate clean air conference committee.

But Richard Wilson, director of the Office of Mobile Sources at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said the new law “certainly seems to go beyond a simple (fuel) availability. . . . It seems to suggest that they have to move a certain volume of fuels.”

Wilson said the dispute eventually may have to be settled in court.

Ironically, the ARB in September had rejected inserting a sales quota into the state plan after intense lobbying by Babikian and other oil industry executives. ARB staff members had proposed the quota.

Regional air pollution officials, anticipating the state’s action, urged Congress to include such a mandate in the federal law, Wilson said.

“That’s one of the reasons California people were working so hard to get language put in the clean air act to shore them up in this regard,’ said Wilson.

According to Sessa, the federal law supersedes the ARB plan.

As a result, Sessa said the ARB staff believes California’s program must be amended to include a fuel sales quota to conform with the federal law.

Babikian said alternative fuels are likely to cost more and will require a subsidy to keep them competitive. He suggested that “dirty gasoline” be taxed, with the proceeds used to launch cleaner fuels. But he said the public should be informed of any subsidies.

BUSH SIGNS CLEAN AIR ACT: President Bush signed a law that aims to eliminate air pollution in most U.S. cities by the year 2000.