Federal Appeals Court Upholds Air Toxic Rules for Refiners.

Oil Daily, The, April, 2003

A federal court agreed with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that its rules to curb oil refiners from increasing toxic gasoline emissions was appropriate and dismissed challenges to the rulemaking from environmental groups as "ill founded."

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in its Apr. 25 ruling upheld all aspects of the EPA rule finalized in March 2001. Environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, the states of New York and Connecticut, and others sued the EPA over the rule, contending that EPA's mobile source air toxics regulations were not stringent enough because they set no new controls for emissions from motor vehicles or fuels.

The groups argued that the rule does not fulfill the legal requirements of the Clean Air Act,...