MOSCOW (MRC) -- The U.S. Department of Energy has finished reviewing retroactive requests from refiners for exemptions from the nation’s biofuel blending laws and has sent recommendations on how to address those requests to the Environmental Protection Agency, Senator Chuck Grassley said, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.
The EPA now has 90 days to review the recommendations, said Grassley, a senator from Iowa, the top ethanol-producing state. The agency will consider 58 pending requests for compliance years 2011 through 2018, EPA data showed.
Under the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), oil refiners must blend billions of gallons of biofuels into their fuel, or buy credits from those that do. Small refiners that prove the rules would financially harm them can apply for exemptions.
The EPA is in charge of granting exemptions, after the Energy Department reviews applications and makes recommendations. EPA did not immediately provide comment.
The pending applications for blending exemptions would help bring oil refiners into compliance with a court ruling this year that had cast doubt over the EPA’s waiver program.
In January, the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that waivers granted to small refineries after 2010 had to take the form of an “extension.” Most of the recipients of waivers in recent years have not continuously received them each year since 2010.
The waivers are controversial, as biofuel advocates say they hurt demand for corn-based ethanol, while the oil industry disputes that, and says blending requirements are too expensive.
As MRC informed earlier, The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed lifting the amount of biofuels that refiners must blend into their fuel next year to 20.17 billion gallons, from 20.09 billion this year, according to two sources familiar with the details of an agency draft proposal.
We remind that, in September 2019, six world's major petrochemical companies in Flanders, Belgium, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, and the Netherlands (Trilateral Region) announced the creation of a consortium to jointly investigate how naphtha or gas steam crackers could be operated using renewable electricity instead of fossil fuels. The Cracker of the Future consortium, which includes BASF, Borealis, BP, LyondellBasell, SABIC and Total, aims to produce base chemicals while also significantly reducing carbon emissions. The companies agreed to invest in R&D and knowledge sharing as they assess the possibility of transitioning their base chemical production to renewable electricity.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 721,290 tonnes in the first four month of 2020, up by 4% year on year. Low density polyethylene (LDPE) and linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) shipments grew partially because of the increased capacity utilisation at ZapSibNeftekhim. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market totalled 347,440 tonnes in January-April 2020 (calculated by the formula production minus export plus import). Supply exclusively of PP random copolymer increased.
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