In a ruling announced June 25, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered an opinion
in HollyFrontier Cheyenne Refining, LLC v.
Renewable Fuels Association, which overturned by a vote of 6 to 3 the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision that in order to qualify for a hardship exemption under the Renewable Fuel Standard, a small refinery must have received uninterrupted, continuous hardship exemptions for every year since 2011.
Although it does allow for refiners to apply to extend RFS exemptions that have lapsed, it does not change the 10th Circuit decision components of the 10th Circuit’s ruling that refiners must still prove economic harm directly related to compliance with the RFS and that EPA cannot use RIN costs as a cause of economic harm while simultaneously admitting RIN costs are recovered in the refiner’s crack spread.`
IPR file
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday in a case about exemptions to the Renewable Fuel Standard.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday on how to interpret federal law requiring renewable fuels to be blended into the nation’s transportation fuel supply.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency runs the Renewable Fuel Standard Program, which was created by Congress in 2005 and expanded in 2007. The RFS maintains that renewable fuels must be blended into transportation fuel. The volume of renewable fuels that is required to be blended into gasoline increases annually.
At the start of the program, all small oil refineries had blanket exemptions from blending requirements. They could apply to extend an exemption and get one if they could prove financial struggles would result from complying with the RFS. The RFS considers any refinery that produces 75,000 or fewer barrels of crude oil per day to be a small refinery.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded Sinclair Oil Corporation waivers that exempt both its refineries in Wyoming from biofuel blending requirements for the 2019 compliance year, two sources familiar with the matter said, making it the only company to have received exemptions for that year so far.
FILE PHOTO: E85 ethanol fuel is shown being pumped into a vehicle at a gas station selling alternative fuels in the town of Nevada, Iowa, December 6, 2007. REUTERS/Jason Reed/File Photo
The EPA had announced it granted two 2019 waivers to refining facilities on Tuesday night, hours before the departure of the administration of President Donald Trump, but did not identify the recipients. Some 30 other waiver applications for that year remained unanswered.
Dispute over Refinery Biofuel Blending Exemptions Lands in Supreme Court
Industry Segment: Petroleum Refining | Word Count: 520 Words
SUGAR LAND January 13, 2021 Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas) A legal dispute over exemptions to biofuel-blending requirements for small refineries has reached the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has agreed to review a ruling by 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which held that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was in the wrong when it waived renewable fuel blending requirements for three refineries. Units of HollyFrontier Corporation (NYSE:HFC) (Dallas, Texas) and and CVR Energy Incorporated s (NYSE:CVI) (Sugar Land, Texas) Wynnewood Refining Company appealed the lower court s decision.