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Renewable Fuels Association critical of EPA, DOE for considering retroactive small refiner exemptions

The President of the Renewable Fuels Association says oil refinery requests for Renewable Fuel Standard exemptions for past compliance years should be denied.

Geoff Cooper tells Brownfield refiners are trying to get around a Tenth Circuit Court decision that said to get a small refinery exemption moving forward, the refiner must show they’ve had one every year since 2013. “And so, wherever there were gaps, the refiners are trying to go back now and rewrite history and get EPA to give them an exemption for those years and fill those gaps.”

And, Cooper says EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler and Energy Undersecretary Mark Menezes testified last week saying these new petitions for past years are being accepted for review and that EPA failed to disclose receipt of the petitions on its website. “The bottom line is the small refiners are trying to rewrite history and it sounds like they may have willing partners at DOE and EPA based on the testimony we heard last week, and that’s very concerning to us.”

Cooper says all of the waiver requests should be denied, and the Tenth Circuit Court decision should be applied nationally now, but because of COVID-19, the deadline to ask the Supreme Court to review the decision has been pushed back to September.

Cooper sent a letter to Administrator Wheeler Friday.

Geoff Cooper from RFA discusses recent attempts by small refineries to get additional exemptions

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