EPA Plan Could Ease Restart Path for St. Croix Refinery by Lifting Upgrade Rules

The EPA’s draft proposal to repeal a key climate regulation could remove costly emissions upgrade requirements, potentially making it easier for new owners of the shuttered St. Croix refinery to resume operations without federal permitting hurdles.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has drafted a proposal that could fundamentally alter the United States’ approach to combating climate change, with far-reaching implications for industries, communities, and environmental policy nationwide, including the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The plan, submitted to the White House on June 30, 2025, seeks to repeal the 2009 “endangerment finding,” a landmark scientific determination that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane threaten human health and welfare. This finding, rooted in the Clean Air Act, has been the legal cornerstone for regulating emissions from vehicles, power plants, and industrial facilities, including oil refineries like the long-shuttered facility on St. Croix. As the EPA prepares to release the draft for public comment, the move has sparked intense debate over its potential to reshape energy markets, environmental protections, and economic prospects from St. Croix to the mainland United States.

The 2009 endangerment finding, prompted by the 2007 Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA, established that six greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)—endanger public health by contributing to climate change. This declaration, finalized on December 15, 2009, empowered the EPA to regulate emissions from major sources, resulting in seven vehicle emissions standards costing over $1 trillion and rules targeting power plants and industrial facilities. The EPA’s draft proposal, as reported by The New York Times and The Washington Post, argues that the agency overstepped its authority under the Clean Air Act by issuing a broad finding, claiming its regulatory power is limited to specific circumstances.

The draft, led by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and influenced by Jeffrey Clark, acting administrator in the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, avoids challenging the science of climate change directly. Instead, it focuses on legal arguments, asserting that greenhouse gases do not “significantly” contribute to dangerous pollution. “Since 2009, I’ve consistently argued that the endangerment finding required a consideration of downstream costs imposed on both mobile sources like cars and stationary sources like factories,” Clark said in a March statement released by the EPA. If finalized, the repeal would eliminate the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, halting existing rules and preventing future ones.