EPA Issues Final Fuels Regulatory Program
Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a final Fuels Regulatory Streamlining rulemaking which provides significant revisions to the existing gasoline, diesel, and other fuels programs.
These revisions affect EMA member companies from the marketers through the refineries including manufacturers and suppliers of ethanol and additives.
The existing fuel regulations were an amalgamation of separate programs implemented over the past 40 years resulting in over 1,000 pages of complex, outdated and redundant regulations.
The revisions delete expired provisions, eliminate redundant provisions and remove unnecessary and out-of-dated provisions in the existing 40 CFR Part 80 fuel quality regulations and replaces Part 80 with a new set of regulations in 40 CFR Part 1090.
These changes are intended to streamline the fuels regulatory process and improve compliance and reduce compliance costs, however, they do not reduce the compliance requirements of the existing fuel standards.
The final rule:
— Removes outdated and duplicative gasoline and diesel fuel regulations and consolidates regulations for EPA’s various fuel programs into a set of rules.
— Simplifies the summertime RVP requirements by establishing a summer RVP per-gallon cap of 7.4 psi across regions.
— Reduces the need for recertification of winter gasoline by allowing all winter gasoline to be used in RFG areas without recertification.
— Consolidates the four existing fuel quality survey programs into a single national in-use fuel quality survey.
— Simplifies the downstream recertification of distillates, removal of outdated provisions in the ULSD regulations and elimination of the prohibition against the presence of red dye in motor vehicle diesel fuel and additional heating fuel requirements.
The final rule is effective January 2021.
Overall, PMAA has expressed support for streaming the fuels regulations and believes these changes will increase compliance with EPA fuel regulations while significantly reducing the compliance burden they impose on small business energy marketers.
