Micheal Clements, NAFB News Service

The biofuels industry Tuesday called on the Environmental Protection Agency to offer answers on what they call a new effort to undermine the Renewable Fuel Standard. During a Senate hearing last month, administration officials confirmed their consideration of retroactive small refinery exemptions covering previous years. The “gap-filings” are designed to reconstitute a continuous string of exemptions for select oil companies, “thus circumventing court limits on new oil industry handouts at the expense of farmers and biofuel producers.” However the ‘gap filings’ “appear to be little more than the latest in a string of oil industry tactics designed to subvert the law and sidestep a court order to uphold the RFS,” according to the letter from ten biofuels and farm groups. The groups say, “Backfilling SREs to circumvent a court decision would exacerbate market uncertainty at a time when rural communities already face unprecedented economic challenges.” The letter comes as more than 100 biofuels plants idled or cut production during the COVID-19 pandemic.