The oil industry showed up in force at the White House this month to discuss the next steps in reining in costs at the Environmental Protection Agency.
The White House Office of Management and Budget released details about a meeting it held with the EPA and major oil companies to discuss preliminary regulations focused on making the full cost of environmental rules known to the public and industry.
The May 3 meeting included giants of the industry, such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Marathon Petroleum, along with senior EPA policy adviser Ken Munis, others from the agency, and White House officials from the budget and environmental offices.
The meeting also included the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s lead trade association, which called for the meeting.
“API regularly engages with members at all levels of the administration on public policies that will strengthen our country, and benefit all American workers, consumers, and the environment,” said Reid Porter, a spokesman for the oil trade group.
Other industry trade groups began meeting with White House budget officials beginning in April on the new rules. But the May meeting was the first of three meetings at the White House to include major companies and not just the trade groups.
The EPA rule, entitled “Increasing Consistency and Transparency in Considering Costs and Benefits in the Rulemaking Process,” is in the preliminary “pre-rule” phase of development, and could actually include more than one regulation, according to an EPA summary.
A summary of the rule included in the administration’s unified agenda explained that the EPA is considering implementing regulations that would increase “consistency across EPA divisions and offices, increase reliability to affected stakeholders, and increase transparency during the development of regulatory actions.”
The primary effect of all this would rein in the substantial costs imposed on industry by multiple EPA regulations being issued across various program offices.
“Many EPA statutes, including the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, provide language on the consideration of costs, but costs have historically been interpreted differently by the EPA depending on the office promulgating the regulatory action,” according to the EPA. “This has led to EPA choosing different standards under the same provision of the statute, the regulatory community not being able to rely on consistent application of the statute, and EPA developing internal policies on the consideration of costs through non-transparent actions.”
The plan is for the EPA to begin implementing regulations through the standard rulemaking process to provide the public “with a better understanding of how EPA is evaluating costs when developing a regulatory action and allow the public to provide better feedback to EPA on potential future proposed rules,” according to the unified agenda.
