The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency may issue a host of waivers for biofuel blending mandates for small refiners, countering a proposal made by the federal government earlier this year for an increase in biofuels blending with regular fuels.
In that proposal, the Trump administration eyed an 8% increase in the volume of biofuels to be blended with regular fuels next year, at a total of 24.02 billion gallons. Bloomberg reported in June that this would be a record high blending mandate for the oil refining industry.
The proposal was seen as a way of juggling oil interests along with biofuel crop producers’ interests—as close to an impossible mission as politics gets. So now, it seems the EPA is seeking to remedy some of the potential damage before it is even done.
Under the RFS program, the EPA may grant a temporary exemption to a small refinery from the annual Renewable Volume Obligations if the refinery can demonstrate that compliance with the RVOs would cause the refinery to suffer disproportionate economic hardship.
The regulator is set to rule on dozens of petitions from small refiners, asking to be exempted by the biofuel blending mandates because they could have an adverse material impact on their revenues. According to Bloomberg, the EPA’s ruling on these petitions may have an impact on biofuel demand and the price of so-called compliance credits.
Earlier this year, President Trump tried to delegate the decision about biofuel mandates to the two rival industries: oil refiners and corn growers. “It makes it easier for (the Trump administration) to arrive at whatever number they arrive at if they are hearing from groups that have historically been at the opposite sides of this,” Will Hupman, vice president of downstream policy at the American Petroleum Institute, told Reuters in March.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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