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MOSCOW (MRC) -- U.S. President Donald
Trump said his administration’s proposal to boost the biofuels market next year
would bring the amount of corn-based ethanol mixed into the nation’s fuel to
about 16 billion gallons (60.6 billion liters), said Hydrocarbonprocessing.
“We’ve
come to an agreement and its going to be, I guess, about, getting close to 16
billion ... that’s a lot of gallons. So they should like me out in Iowa,” he
told a news conference.
The U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program
currently requires refiners to blend 15 billion gallons of ethanol per year, but
the corn lobby has said the Environmental Protection Agency’s use of waivers
means the actual volumes blended are lower than that.
Trump's EPA
unveiled the plan here last week to boost U.S. biofuels consumption to help
struggling farmers, but did not provide an exact figure. The plan cheered the
agriculture industry but triggered a backlash from Big Oil, which views biofuels
as competition.
The deal is widely seen as an attempt by Trump, who faces
a re-election fight next year, to mend fences with the powerful corn lobby,
which was outraged by the EPA’s decision in August to exempt 31 oil refineries
from their obligations under the RFS. That freed the refineries from the
requirement to blend biofuels or buy credits from those who do.
Biofuel
companies, farmers and Midwest lawmakers complain such waivers undercut demand
for corn, which is already slumping because of the U.S. trade war with China.
Oil refiners say the waivers protect blue-collar jobs and have no real impact on
ethanol use.
As MRC informed earlier,
U.S. President Donald Trump has tentatively approved a plan to increase the
amount of biofuels that oil refiners are required to blend each year to
compensate for exemptions handed out to small refiners by the Environmental
Protection Agency.
The plan is intended to address a major source of
anger in U.S. farm country as Trump seeks to hold favor in the Midwest ahead of
next year’s election, but it is likely to upset the oil industry, another
important political constituency, underscoring the pitfalls of U.S. biofuel
policy. |
