National Tribal Air Association

U.S. EPA announced today that it will miss another deadline for proposing greenhouse gas rules, this time for refineries.

EPA was to have proposed a new emission rule for petroleum refineries by Dec. 10 under a settlement agreement reached last year with environmentalists.

"EPA expects to need more time to complete work on greenhouse gas pollution standards for oil refineries, and is working with the litigants to develop a new schedule to replace the current date of mid-December for a rule proposal," the agency said in a statement.

The agency has already missed several deadlines to propose New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for electric utilities, though Administrator Lisa Jackson said in a weekend interview with the television program "EnergyNow!" that they would be released early next year after a review by the White House Office of Management and Budget. The original deadline was in July.

Jake Schmidt, the international climate policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said EPA's delays contribute to a perception abroad that the United States is not pulling its weight on emissions reduction. That, he said, will weaken the United States' hand in the next round of international negotiations, which begin next week in Durban, South Africa.

"It gives the impression that this administration is not serious about moving forward on this issue," Schmidt said.

Negotiators from other countries are sometimes confused, he said, about whether President Obama's decision last September to pull the plug on new Clean Air Act regulations for ozone means the United States won't be regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The two regulations are separate, a distinction he said is lost on many observers abroad.

"It's the total picture the countries care about," he said.

Schmidt said the United States would bring some good news to Durban -- especially on the administration's proposed near-doubling of passenger cars' fuel efficiency to 54.5 mpg by 2025. But it is hard to quantify the emissions savings of the fuel efficiency program, he said.

At the same time, the administration is making international headlines for its decision to delay its decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport high-carbon fuel from Canada's oil-sands region to U.S. refineries.

Add to that U.S. negotiators' refusal to begin talks that would lead to legally binding emissions targets unless major emitters in the developing world -- such as with China and India -- also agree to binding targets, he said, and it becomes clear why the United States is not taking a leadership position in the climate talks.

"I think the general perception throughout the world, at least in the conversations I have, is that the U.S. is a lost cause on emissions reduction for a very long time -- 10, 20 years," Schmidt said.

John Coequyt, the senior climate and energy representative at the Sierra Club, said Jackson's weekend statement that the NSPS rules for utilities would be out in the new year is a positive step.

"I think the fact that she said it indicates that that rule is in better shape politically within the administration, so that's great news," Coequyt said. "That's at this point ... the fastest they can do it."