May 2, 1999

Crackdown on Pollution by Vehicles

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By KEITH BRADSHER

ASHINGTON -- Defending his new plans for cleaner air against criticism from the oil industry, President Clinton said Saturday that proposed regulations on gasoline and tailpipe emissions would not impose excessive costs.

In his weekly radio address, the president said that the new rules were designed to avoid creating hardships for businesses or consumers. "The proposal would achieve a dramatic reduction in air pollution for the 21st century, and it would do so in the most cost-effective and flexible ways," he said.

Oil lobbyists and their congressional allies began criticizing the proposals on Friday, as the administration began a series of briefings. The American Petroleum Institute, the industry's lobbying arm, held a press conference on Friday afternoon to say that the plan would unnecessarily raise gasoline prices in rural areas with no air pollution problems.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., from the oil-producing state, said in a statement that he had begun drafting legislation to devise a more cost-effective approach.

But Inhofe, the chairman of the Senate's clean air subcommittee, faces a difficult task. The Clean Air Act of 1990 gives the administration the legislative authority to act, meaning that the new rules will take effect unless Congress can agree on a way to change them.

And the administration has an unlikely ally if a battle does develop in Congress: the auto industry, which wants cleaner gasoline to simplify the task of designing cleaner automobiles, particularly sport utility vehicles, which emit up to three times as much air pollution as cars.

Unlike previous administrations, the Clinton administration has pursued an unusual strategy that seems to have weakened oil and auto industry lobbyists by dividing them. After decades of piecemeal regulation of the two industries, the administration is proposing for the first time a single set of rules to cover both fuel that goes into auto engines and the waste gases that come out.

Rather than fighting the administration for less stringent emissions standards, the auto industry has allied itself with environmentalists in demanding cleaner gasoline.

Josephine Cooper, the president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, based in Washington, said that the industry generally supported the new rules because of the sulfur provisions, even though the rules include a requirement that big sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks start meeting car pollution rules for the first time by 2009.

The auto industry wants the administration's help in meeting this tough requirement by forcing the oil industry to eliminate as much sulfur as possible, Ms. Cooper said.

The oil industry had proposed that only Eastern states and California be subject to strict sulfur regulations, while Western states with lesser air pollution problems be allowed less stringent rules.

Oil companies will have to spend several billion dollars to install more sulfur-removing equipment at refineries, and some refineries might switch to producing lubricants rather than go to this expense, said William O'Keefe, the executive vice president of the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry's lobbying group.

To accommodate the oil companies, the administration will allow two dozen small refineries an extra two to four years to comply with the sulfur rules, Carol Browner, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, told reporters on Friday. While the American Petroleum Institute estimates the extra cost from removing sulfur at six cents a gallon, Ms. Browner put it at one or two cents a gallon.

Helping the auto industry against the oil industry may have longer-term benefits for the Clinton administration. The oil industry is an implacable foe of the administration on many issues and is largely based in Texas, where George W. Bush, the front-runner among likely Republican candidates for the presidency next year, is the governor.

On the other hand, the auto industry in Michigan, while leery of Vice President Al Gore's enthusiasm for the environment, is less hostile to Democrats than the oil industry is and the United Automobile Workers Union is a powerful force in Democratic politics.

The new rules are also likely to be popular with environmentalists and public health advocates.