NPRA ’08: US energy, trade policy seen in tandem

31 March 2008 23:40  [Source: ICIS news]

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (ICIS news)--US policymakers should make use of the country’s economic clout to enforce climate and site safety standards for chemical products imported from overseas, president and CEO Peter Huntsman of Huntsman said on Monday.

“The US is the world’s largest consumer and should be using regulations to ensure that products imported meet the same standards as US industry,” Huntsman said from the sidelines of the 33rd National Petrochemical & Refiners Association (NPRA) conference.

Issues such as US carbon emissions and safety standards cannot be viewed in isolation from those of industry and utilities around the world, he said.

“There are chemical facilities around the world where I would not feel comfortable walking through, much less working in them,” he said.

In response to a question about the growing effort by the US chemical industry to educate voters on the unintended consequences of proposed legislation such as the “cap and trade” bill, Huntsman replied that the transportation industry and even labour unions could become allies in the effort to preserve jobs.

He said voters would take an interest in the issue when it becomes clear that imposing stricter regulations on the US industry does little to attenuate carbon emissions when foreign-made goods that do not comply with the same standards compete on a much lower cost basis with domestic goods.

“The US chemical industry is truly at a crossroads,” he said, pointing to the industry’s role in major infrastructure projects such as the Houston Ship Channel, and the likelihood that no new world scale chemical facility would be built for a generation because of the increasingly uncompetitive position of US industry.

By: John Waggoner
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