Pointing to reports that big oil companies have received RFS waivers intended for small-volume refiners, 13 Corn Belt senators asked EPA administrator Scott Pruitt for an accounting of the waivers and their impact on the ethanol mandate. The bipartisan group said the waivers “clearly undermine the president’s long-standing support of the RFS.”
An ethanol trade group has estimated the waivers could effectively reduce the 15 billion-gallon target for U.S. consumption of corn ethanol by 1 billion gallons in 2017 and this year. “Worse, EPA’s actions are already hurting biofuel producers and farmers across the United States at a time when farm income is at the lowest levels since 2006 and retaliatory trade measures from China threaten to deepen the crisis,” said the senators in a letter.
“Perhaps most concerning, these lucrative waivers have reportedly been issued behind closed doors, outside of the public process, while the EPA has simultaneously been working with refineries to pressure President Trump to sign off on a RIN cap that would wreak further havoc on the RFS.”
The letter asks for details of each waiver that was issued and the justification for it. The senators also asked Pruitt for a commitment to consider the waivers in tandem with development of the annual RFS and to allow public discussion of waiver requests.
Senators Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, and Chuck Grassley, a Republican, took the lead on the letter, signed by senators from Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, Illinois, Nebraska, South Dakota, Missouri, Indiana and North Dakota.