Court Grants EPA More Time to Appeal Small Refinery Exemption Case

This week, the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals announced that it was granting the EPA an extra two weeks to appeal a recent ruling which said that the EPA had exceeded its authority and must reconsider the small refinery exemptions (SREs) that it had granted to three different refineries. News reports last week had indicated that the Trump Administration would challenge the ruling, but the Administration decided it needed a few more weeks to make a final decision.

In the ruling, the court said only refineries that had exemptions continuously since 2011 could apply for new ones. The Trump Administration’s announcement marked a reversal where top officials had planned to drastically scale back the number of SREs which would have negatively impacted refineries by increasing RIN prices. The issue is important to petroleum marketers because high RIN prices leads to an unlevel playing field in the motor fuels market.