Traditional Foes Forge Pact on Cleaner Gasoline : * Environment: The agreement involves a program to supply fuel that will lessen smog in cities that are hardest hit.
In a rare accord between historic rivals, representatives of the oil industry and national environmental groups reached agreement Thursday on a program to supply cleaner-burning gasoline to the smoggiest cities starting in 1995.
On one level, the agreement simply fills in the operating details of a Clean Air Act provision passed by Congress last year. Oil refiners must reformulate gasoline so that the amount of smog-forming and toxic substances emitted through vehicle tailpipes is reduced by 15%.
But the terms of the agreement and the way it was forged in a process known as “regulatory negotiation” give the deal an importance beyond gasoline. The signatories, representing a range of traditionally warring interests--oil companies, clean-fuels manufacturers, environmental and consumer groups, auto makers and state governments--are bound not to litigate or lobby against regulations that implement their compromises.
The agreement thus enhances chances that a key clean air initiative will avoid the years of court wrangling and regulatory paralysis that have blocked other ambitious laws. The agreement will be rendered into regulatory language and adopted by the Environmental Protection Agency, which also agreed to the deal.
The regulations may have less importance for California, where current and proposed state gasoline formulation rules will be more stringent.
But the Clean Air Act regulations would require major investments by California refiners that make and supply gasoline for use across the nation. Already, Los Angeles-based Atlantic Richfield Co. has committed $1 billion to upgrade its Los Angeles refinery to make less-polluting gasoline.
Because of gasoline’s importance to the U.S. economy, its contribution to air pollution and its complex distribution network, Thursday’s accord is considered the most sweeping ever consummated in regulatory negotiation, or “reg-neg,” as the process is called. By demonstrating the effectiveness of reg-neg in translating contentious laws into regulation, the deal is expected to increase use of this practice across the government.
“This shows the power of the process,” said Phil Harter, a lawyer who mediated the negotiation. “When this started six months ago, there weren’t five people in Washington who thought we could reach agreement. . . . But through the structured process of developing facts and bringing the parties face to face, they were able to find common ground.”
Relatively few reg-negs have been conducted since the Administrative Conference of the United States recommended them for federal agencies in 1982. But Congress, increasingly frustrated by failures of the executive branch to produce regulations that implement its laws, passed a new law last fall encouraging use of the negotiations.
The Bush Administration has only twice let go of its authority and approved reg-negs to write rules of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990.
The requirement to clean up gasoline is said to be the single most important measure in the new law to reduce urban smog, which contains ozone, a serious respiratory irritant.
