Ethanol interests are renewing their focus on legal avenues after the apparent failure of their appeals to the Trump administration to curb the granting of biofuel blending waivers.
The Trump administration has been more liberal in granting the waivers, which forgive some petitioning refineries that process less than 75,000 barrels per day of crude oil from meeting annual biofuel blending targets set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. President Donald Trump reportedly called EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler to direct the latest round of exemptions. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz said in March at a refining industry event his vote to confirm Wheeler's nomination to head the agency hinged on Wheeler's promise to continue granting them.
The EPA's waivers have lowered prices for biofuel blending credits, known as RINs, benefiting the U.S. refining industry while reducing a revenue stream for the U.S. ethanol industry. The Renewable Fuels Association blamed the policy for the shut down of 13 ethanol plants.

"We have already filed litigation and sued [the] EPA in three separate actions around small refinery exemptions," Renewable Fuels Association President and CEO Geoff Cooper told S&P Global Market Intelligence on Aug. 19. "We have continued to try and resolve the issue through the administrative process, through working with [the] EPA and the White House directly, and I think the recent announcement of 31 exemptions shows that we're not breaking through using that avenue. We're circling the wagons and redoubling our efforts to try and resolve this issue through the court system."
On May 29, 2018, the Renewable Fuels Association announced it filed suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit challenging some of the waivers granted by the EPA. Cooper said that suit was moving along "most quickly" with oral arguments scheduled for September.
In August 2018, the organization also filed a lawsuit in federal district court challenging a denial by the EPA and the U.S. Department of Energy for records relating to the exemptions.
On July 31, the Renewable Fuels Association said it was part of a coalition petitioning the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to direct the EPA to revise its regulations for setting annual biofuel blending volume obligations to account for waivers the agency issues retroactively. That action followed an EPA proposal to leave the mandated ethanol blending volume requirement for the 2020 calendar year at the 15-billion gallon level set by the U.S. Congress.
Cooper said he sees "unfounded fears within the administration about the impact of RIN prices on gas prices" as one of the factors driving EPA policy.
A May report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found the Renewable Fuel Standard "was likely associated with modest gasoline price increases outside of the Midwest and that these price increases may have diminished over time." The report also said, "most experts and stakeholders the GAO interviewed recently stated that RINs either had a small effect on prices or no effect on prices." The GAO said that outside of the Midwest, ethanol transportation and storage infrastructure costs "resulted in gasoline prices that were several cents per gallon higher than they otherwise would have been."
"It feels like there's more education and discussion needs to happen around some of these issues with the administration, and we're committed to that, but so far haven't had much luck in cutting through the noise," Cooper said.
The American Fuel and Petrochemicals Manufacturers, a U.S. refining industry trade organization, was unable to provide comment. But the organization lauded the EPA's latest waivers in an Aug. 9 statement, arguing that "they will go a long way to protecting manufacturing jobs in Pennsylvania, the Midwest, and across the country."
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