A new campaign from the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) spotlights the surging costs and unprecedented impact of biofuel mandates on U.S. refineries and the need for immediate action to get RFS costs under control.
Last week, the Environmental Council of the States (ECOS) held their spring meeting in Washington, D.C. to discuss, among several things, the changing energy and regulatory landscape during a Trump administration.
There is a fundamental flaw in the system designed to ensure compliance with the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS): The assumption that refiners would not blend ethanol into their fuel were it not for the policy and its threat of crippling costs being imposed on obligated parties who do not blend.
Twenty senators delivered a letter to President Trump yesterday firmly stating their opposition to rumored regulatory action to expand the sale of E15 fuel.
During a recent visit to Iowa — smack in the middle of corn country — the President announced a policy change that would direct the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to waive Clean Air Act rules and permit the year-round sale of E15 (gasoline with 15-percent ethanol).
Governor Gavin Newsom continues to blame fuel refiners for California’s highest-in-the-nation fuel prices. He couldn't be more wrong. The problem and solution to much of California’s fuel price challenge can be found in Sacramento policy. Take a look to better understand the role of policy in regional price differences, why it’s inaccurate to equate “margins” or “refinery cracks” with “profits,” and why windfall profit taxes are a known policy failure.
The return of fuel demand to pre-pandemic levels and the slower rebound of crude oil and fuel production has created concerns about whether supplies of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel will be sufficient to meet global demand. U.S. refineries are up and running at near maximum utilization. Other major refining countries, for a variety of reasons, have not kept pace bringing their facilities back into operation or resuming sales of fuel to the market. As a result, wholesale fuel prices have increased and so have refinery “crack spreads."
A Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) release—which basically involves making additional barrels of crude oil available for sale to the world market—is meant to increase global supply. Meeting today’s demand with more supply is a recipe for lower prices. The United States released millions of barrels from our SPR in the past several months, as did many other countries.
AFPM opposes the Inflation Reduction Act as written. We evaluated the bill against our core principles, specifically whether the legislation would support strong U.S. refining and petrochemical industries and whether it pursued emissions reductions in a market-based and cost-effective manner. Unfortunately, the IRA falls short of these goals.
A diversity of consumer groups, environmental organizations, food producers and engine manufacturers joined AFPM in voicing their opposition to the unsustainable ethanol mandates released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for 2019.