The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today issued a Final RIN Market Reform rule that authorizes the sale of E-15 year-round throughout the United States and enhances disclosure requirements under the Renewable Fuel Standard. 

The Final Rule appears to have adopted a number of suggestions made by NATSO in comments filed with the agency as part of the rulemaking process. NATSO filed its comments in conjunction with the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) and the Society of Independent Gasoline Marketers (SIGMA). 

NATSO continues to analyze the Final Rule and will have a more detailed analysis in the coming days. The Final Rule appears to have refrained from adopting proposed regulatory changes that would have dissuaded and prevented fuel marketers from buying, selling, and blending renewable fuels under the RFS. 
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California is well known for its leadership in protecting the environment and the state’s status as a trailblazer has stimulated both innovation and imitation. California was one of the first states to develop a comprehensive air quality improvement plan, establish a state agency dedicated to promoting energy conservation, and the first state to create a commission whose sole purpose is to protect the coast from overdevelopment. 

It comes as no surprise then that California also leads in the development and implementation of policies to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and other states have since followed. Greenhouse gases are the compounds that trap heat in the atmosphere, causing a steady increase in the temperature of the planet and a shift in climate patterns that have been the norm since the last ice age. 
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NATSO along with the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) and the Society of Independent Gasoline Marketers of America (SIGMA) filed public comments on a proposed regulation that would impose significant reforms on the market for Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) that would be detrimental to many NATSO members. The proposal is part of a proposed rule that would allow gasoline with 15 percent ethanol to be sold year-round throughout the country. 

In the comments, the trade associations, which represent 90 percent of the retail sales of motor fuels, urged EPA to finalize only those aspects of its proposed RIN Market Reform Rule that enhance disclosure requirements and set aside for future reconsideration those aspects that would modify market behavior. RINs are the credits that EPA uses to ensure that refiners satisfy their obligations under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). 
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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — NATSO, the national association for truck stops and travel plazas, along with other organizations representing the biodiesel supply chain, have praised a bipartisan group of lawmakers for introducing legislation to extend the biodiesel tax credit. 

“This legislation underscores the fact that the biodiesel tax credit has strong Democratic support in the House of Representatives,” said David Fialkov, vice president of government affairs, NATSO. “The authors of this legislation understand that the biodiesel tax credit helps create jobs, reduces the transportation sector’s greenhouse gas emissions and enables fuel retailers to offer more competitively priced diesel fuel, which in turn lowers the price of all consumer goods that are moved by truck. The biodiesel tax credit has bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress. It’s time to get this done.” 
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Jeff Hove: Since the inception of the U.S. EPA Renewable Fuels Standard (2007), the downstream petroleum industry has been taking great risks to fulfill the intent of Congress. Blending renewable fuels is expensive and requires new equipment, new suppliers, complex RIN credit tracking, and new risks associated with marketing new products. The otherwise successful RFS was first undermined by criminal forces generating fraudulent RIN credits which almost brought the RFS to it knees. Now the primary force undermining the RFS is the EPA itself. The issuance of small refinery exemptions, often to the largest, most profitable refining companies in the country, behind closed doors, has dramatically undermined demand for biodiesel. The manner in which EPA issued these waivers under former Administrator Pruitt was nothing short of government-sanctioned market manipulation. I am hopeful that the Agency will change course under Administrator Wheeler. 

Article Excerpt:The market impact of small refinery exemptions (SREs) granted under the RFS remains a highly contentious issue. From a regulatory standpoint, there is no doubt that SREs opened a backdoor mechanism for the EPA to reduce the statutorily-mandated RFS volumes (farmdoc daily, July 12, 2018). However, there is sharp disagreement about the impact of SREs on the physical consumption of biofuels, particularly for ethanol. The ethanol industry has argued vociferously that there has been substantial destruction of demand in the physical ethanol market due to the SREs. However, a series of farmdoc daily articles in recent months showed that the physical use of ethanol declined little if any due to SREs (September 13, 2018; December 13, 2018; January 16, 2019).
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In the coming weeks, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is expected to propose regulations that would reform the market for Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs), which are the “credits” EPA uses to ensure that refiners satisfy their obligations under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). Although the supposed purpose of these reforms is to “improve transparency” and limit volatility in RIN markets, the reforms under consideration would cause more harm than good. In fact, as NATSO’s “RIN Market Volatility” Chart demonstrates, wild RIN price swings over the past several years have been caused by policy announcements, rumors, and news reports, rather than any underlying flaw in RIN markets themselves… 
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ORLANDO, Fla. — The Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) has been involved in preliminary conversations around the possibility of a collaborative effort of Midwest states seeking to establish a Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) program similar to the West Coast Collaborative, RFA President and CEO Geoff Cooper said Tuesday. 

In an interview with reporters at the National Ethanol Conference here, Cooper revealed that discussions have taken place but that they have been only exploratory so far. 

Cooper said that in the early days of California’s LCFS program, there was a strong “fear of the unknown” factor among ethanol producers regarding how their industry and ethanol demand in that state would be affected. 
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