The cost of Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) compliance credits, specifically D6 renewable identification numbers (RINs), is out of control. Sales of D6 RINs for conventional ethanol recently registered above $1.90 (the highest trades in history).
Refineries are not the story when it comes to retail gasoline prices. Raw materials (in this case crude oil) account for the biggest share of the final price consumers pay.
The operator of an 800-ton crane at ExxonMobil’s Baton Rouge, Louisiana, polypropylene project construction site lowers a new 150-foot-tall reactor into place.
By mid-January, news sources have thoroughly exhausted reports on American’s Yuletide spending and attention inevitably turns to the day of reckoning: Tax Day.
Right now, members of Congress are debating a series of taxes as part of the multi-trillion-dollar reconciliation package that could make the crude oil that runs through U.S. refineries more expensive.
COVID-19 upended energy markets. Demand disappeared and producers scaled back. Now that economies are reopening, and the demand for goods and services is rebounding, the demand for energy all along the supply chain is increasing, driving up not only the cost of the feedstocks and fuels refineries and petrochemical manufacturers use, but also the cost of the energy used at every step of the supply chain.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – "Federal policy is discouraging supply by shutting down pipelines, putting future production off limits, talking down the future of the petroleum business, and imposing expensive requirements on refineries, chief among them a burdensome Renewable Fuel Standard. The Administration is blaming others when it ought to take a sober look at its own energy policy."
If the Biden Administration is serious about helping consumers, it needs to adopt policies that promote U.S. energy production and refining. A good place to start would be right-sizing RFS mandates.
Limiting California’s access to the exact types of crude oil its facilities need will only increase prices for the state’s consumers and travelers. Drivers are already dealing with gasoline prices in excess of $5 per gallon and the highest fuel taxes of the 50 states. Confining energy producers and consumers to a smaller pool of crude oil will make a very sensitive price environment that much worse.
