E15

Less than two weeks before the new year, the EPA said it modified the Renewable Fuel Standard to ensure that “a net of 15 billion gallons” of corn ethanol is blended into gasoline in 2020. But ethanol makers and farm groups were skeptical that the EPA’s final version of the RFS, issued on …

For years, larger and larger sales of corn ethanol were almost a given. For one thing, the Renewable Fuel Standard guaranteed biofuels a share of the gasoline market, and car-happy Americans used more gasoline every year. The joyride, however, may be ending, says a University of Illinois economist.

The EPA says it will approve sale of E15 — which contains 15 percent ethanol and 85 percent gasoline — before the start of the summer driving season, as promised by President Trump. To make sure the agency meets its goal, Senate Finance Committee chairman Chuck Grassley said on Tuesday the EPA should propose a stripped-down regulation devoted solely to the corn-based biofuel.

The partial government shutdown is putting a kink in the Trump tariff payments to farmers and it could prevent the EPA from approving the sale of E15 by the summer, as promised by President Trump. But farm groups have made few public complaints about the shutdown, now in its third week.

Ten days ahead of the midterm elections, President Trump will tout his agricultural record to a pared-down crowd of 7,000 teenagers at the FFA national convention in Indianapolis and campaign in southern Illinois for an imperiled Republican member of the House Agriculture Committee.

On his way to a campaign rally in Iowa, President Trump started the regulatory process on Tuesday for year-round sales of a 15 percent blend of corn ethanol in gasoline, sought in the Farm Belt as a tonic for trade war jitters. E15 sales are banned during the summer now, and the EPA will have to move expeditiously, given the federal rule-writing process, to implement Trump's order by next June 1, the usual cut-off date.

Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is “working very hard to find a solution” for the year-round sale of E15, said Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley on a conference call with reporters Wednesday. Grassley also said that an earlier proposal that would allow refiners to earn the credits called RINs for exports is “no longer on the table” at the EPA.

President Trump, who campaigned for the White House as a friend of corn ethanol, said on Thursday that the administration is “very close” to approving year-round sales of a 15 percent blend of ethanol into gasoline. “We’re taking care of your ethanol,” said Trump during a trip to Iowa, the top corn-growing and ethanol-producing state.

President Trump announced the resignation of scandal-plagued Scott Pruitt as EPA administrator on Thursday but said that the agency’s No. 2 official, Andrew Wheeler, “will continue with our great and lasting EPA agenda.”

President Trump confirmed in public what was being whispered in private — that he would not allow ethanol exports to count toward meeting U.S. biofuel targets — in greeting Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst at a bill-signing ceremony on Wednesday.

Corn state senators are expected to press President Trump today to support the year-round sale of E15 gasoline at a White House meeting, while oil state senators will be seeking a cap on the price of RINs. Neither side knows what to expect.