The following description of the relevant regulatory provisions and related issues is provided to help the public in preparing comments. As noted above, the conventional gasoline program contains emissions requirements designed to ensure that gasoline does not degrade in quality from 1990 levels in ways that would adversely affect the levels of air pollution from motor vehicles. The Clean Air Act calls for conventional gasoline produced or imported by a refiner or importer to stay as clean as it was in 1990. To meet this requirement, EPA regulations require that domestic refiners establish a baseline that reflects the quality of the gasoline they produced in 1990. The emission requirements for conventional gasoline are keyed to these individual baselines.
Individual baselines play a limited role in the reformulated gasoline program.
From 1995 through 1997, certain of the emission requirements for reformulated gasoline are expressed in terms of individual baselines. After that date, individual baselines are not used in the RFG program. Based on the limited ability of importers and domestic blenders to determine the quality of the gasoline they produced or imported in 1990, in almost all cases they are assigned the statutory baseline instead of an individual baseline. The statutory baseline was designed to approximate the national average for 1990 gasoline quality. There is no provision in the regulations under which a foreign refiner may establish an individual baseline, nor are they assigned the statutory baseline.