Three corn ethanol advocacy organizations and the National Farmers Union jointly sued the US Environmental Protection Agency for allegedly abusing its authority to issue hardship waivers to three refineries having trouble meeting quotas under the federal Renewable Fuels Standard.
EPA extended RFS hardship waivers held by two HollyFrontier Corp. refineries in Utah and Wyoming in 2017 and one in Wynnewood, Okla., operated by a CVR Energy Inc. subsidiary in 2018 without publishing required notices of the decisions, the Renewable Fuels Association, National Corn Growers Association, American Coalition for Ethanol, and NFU said in their May 29 lawsuit in US Appeals Court for the 10th District in Denver.
Congress sought to temporarily protect small refineries with 75,000 b/d or less crude oil throughput capacity from financial hardships resulting from having to meet quotas set by the RFS when it passed the law a decade ago, the groups noted.
It also allowed those refineries to seek extensions of their exemptions after 2 years if they could show that trying to meet the quotas created a disproportionate economic hardship, they said.
EPA granted “only a handful” of hardship requests until late in 2017 before granting several in the months since without providing the required explanations, including the three mentioned in their lawsuit, the group said.
They sued several weeks after RFA criticized EPA for excusing three small refineries operated by San Antonio-based Andeavor from having to meet 2016 renewable fuel quotas (OGJ Online, Apr. 4, 2018).