Chad Smith, NAFB News Service

Two of the nation’s key renewable fuel groups reacted to the Environmental Protection Agency’s announcement that 52 new small refinery exemption petitions have been filed. The National Biodiesel Board is asking EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler to immediately reject the petitions that cover compliance years from 2011-2018. Kurt Kovarik is the NBB Vice President of Federal Affairs. He says, “EPA’s consideration of small refinery exemption petitions going back to 2011 flies in the face of the recent 10th Circuit Court decision. By rolling the clock back, there appears to be no length the EPA won’t go to help refiners undermine the Renewable Fuels Standard.” Kovarik says the handouts would come at the expense of ethanol and biodiesel. Growth Energy says the “gap filings” are designed to reconstitute a continuous string of exemptions to circumvent court limits on new oil industry handouts. “This absurd maneuver is a blatant attempt to dodge the law at the expense of rural communities,” says Growth Energy CEO Emily Skor. “EPA’s dashboard confirms that the refiners hope to rewrite years of history just to bypass the 10th Circuit Court and push more biofuels out of the marketplace.”