WASHINGTON - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency could grant fewer waivers exempting small refineries from the country’s biofuel policy as lower prices for blending credits have reduced the cost of compliance, the agency’s administrator Andrew Wheeler told Reuters on Thursday.
Under the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard program, refiners must blend certain volumes of biofuels like ethanol into their fuel each year or purchase credits from those that do. But small refineries with a capacity of less than 75,000 barrels per day can get waivers if they prove that compliance with RFS would cause them significant financial strain.
“The RIN prices have been relatively low and relatively calm since last spring so that would tell me that there should be less economic harm in the refining industry right now than there was a year ago,” Wheeler said. Wheeler also said the agency was expecting to receive recommendations from the Department of Energy by the end of the week on which biofuel waiver applications that are pending should be granted. Some 39 refineries have filed applications for small refinery waivers for the 2018 compliance year.
Wheeler said he believed the EPA’s proposed reforms of the RIN market were going to satisfy both the corn and oil industries. “The RIN price mechanisms should help bring down and keep the price of RINs lower and stable which the oil industry likes, and the E15 is something that the ethanol industry likes,” he said.
Perhaps one could add that since the Mid-West is underwater that maze, corn are not being planted by farmers - hence its not available!