Refiners press EPA to switch RFS biofuels 'point of obligation'
By Jonathan H. Harsch, Agri-Pulse.
In comments to the EPA, CVR Energy, which owns merchant refineries in Kansas and Oklahoma, charges the agency with “failure to remove the market constraints that are preventing more renewable fuel from being blended.”
Independent merchant refiners are primarily small-to-medium-sized operations. The majority of the fuels produced at these operations are distributed through a third-party pipeline where the refiner has no control of its fuels once in the pipeline.
As the battle continues over whether EPA should raise or lower its annual Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) volume requirements for blending ethanol and biodiesel into the nation's transportation fuel supply, CVR and several other petroleum refiners insist that the best way for EPA to increase biofuels use is to “correct the fundamental flaw in its regulations.”