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Jobe: Unnecessary biodiesel challenges

The U.S. biodiesel industry is going through some big market and federal policy challenges.  National Biodiesel Board CEO, Joe Jobe, says the EPA has left the Renewable Fuel Standard volume requirements in limbo and Congress waited far too long to reinstate the biodiesel tax credit.  Both, he tells Brownfield, have cost jobs, “It was mostly harmful on the small, medium-sized (biodiesel) businesses. Particularly smaller entrepreneurs and community-based businesses. A lot of them went out of business. It’s just been extraordinarily unfortunate and unnecessary.”

Jobe tells Brownfield it’s because of the dysfunction in Washington, D.C., “This is not a singular issue. This is a side effect of a government that has failed to govern.”

On the market side, he says, people think domestic oil exploration has caused the lower gas prices, but it’s OPEC’s goal to shut down fracking in the U.S. that has caused the shift, “There actually is something we can do about it. We can diversify our energy portfolio so that we’re not so – so that we’re not held hostage to OPEC, so they cannot negatively impact this country, which is what they’re doing.”

Jobe says that’s what the RFS was designed to do. The National Biodiesel Board is holding its annual conference in Fort Worth, Texas next week (Monday – Thursday).

AUDIO:  Interview with Joe Jobe (20:00 mp3):