The Environmental Protection Agency today formally announced a 60 day extension of the comment period on the proposed rule revising the national Renewable Fuel Standard program, commonly referred to as RFS2. The original comment period was to end on July 27, 2009 and will now end on September 25, 2009.

“With the 60-day comment period extension, EPA seeks to provide the public adequate time to provide meaningful comment while finalizing and implementing the standards in a timely manner,” the agency stated in a release.

Tom Buis, CEO of Growth Energy, said he was not surprised by the action. “They only had a 60 day beginning comment period and this is between 1000 and 2000 pages of scientific and technical data,” said Buis in an interview this week. “You don’t want to get a bad rule because people didn’t have the time to thoroughly analyze it.”

Buis says he believes the agency will still have enough time to implement the RFS2 rule by the January 1 target date, “even if they have to do what they did when they implemented the original RFS, which was announce the volumetric level for each of the fuels and then fill in the details later.”

More information and instructions on submitting comments on the rule, which was mandated by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, can be found here on the EPA website.