Portions of Refinery MACT Withdrawn by U.S. EPA

On July 18, 2011, U.S. EPA published notice in the Federal Register (76 FR 42052) that the residual risk and technology review portions of the revised National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) from Petroleum Refineries (Refinery MACT 1) were being withdrawn from the final rule. The final rule had been signed and made available on U.S. EPA’s website on January 16, 2011. However, the final rule was never published in the Federal Register because, four days later, the Administration ordered all agencies to withdraw from the Office of the Federal Register “all proposed or final regulations that have not been published in the Federal Register so that they can be reviewed and approved by a department or agency head.” Upon further review, U.S. EPA determined that the residual risk and technology reviews may not accurately characterize the risk posed by this source category, and the partial withdraw of the final rule was subsequently issued. 

It just so happens that there are two (2) MACT regulations that potentially apply to the Petroleum Refinery source group, with the second MACT regulation affectionately referred to as the “Refinery MACT 2” rule, and that the Petroleum Refinery industry is deep in the throes of responding to a Refinery MACT 2 Information Collection Request (ICR) issued by U.S. EPA. To justify the partial withdraw of the residual risk and technology review portions of the Refinery MACT 1 rule, U.S. EPA stated that they intend to conduct a more “robust” analysis of the residual risk from the Petroleum Refinery source group once all of the data requested in the Refinery MACT 2 ICR has been received.