Press release:

Unworkable RFS law needs overhaul, API tells Congress

Bill Bush | 202.682.8114 | bushw@api.orgShareThis

WASHINGTON, July 10, 2012 – API President and CEO Jack Gerard told a congressional subcommittee today that while America’s Renewable Fuels Standard law had increased use of ethanol and other biofuels, implementation of the law’s requirements was becoming increasingly difficult and could hurt consumers. The volume requirements in the law could soon require concentrations of ethanol in gasoline above levels known to be safe.

    “This would present an unacceptable risk to American car owners, who have invested billions of dollars in vehicles that were designed, built, and warranted to operate on a maximum 10 percent ethanol blend,” Gerard said in testimony delivered to the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power. “It also would put at risk billions of dollars of gasoline station equipment in thousands of retail outlets across America, most owned by small independent businesses.

    “Biofuels are now in almost all gasoline. While API supports the continued, appropriate use of ethanol and other renewable fuels, the Renewable Fuels Standard law has become increasingly unrealistic, unworkable, and a threat to consumers. It needs an overhaul.”

    Almost 15 billion gallons of biofuels will be blended in transportation fuels this year, and that number must double by 2020 under the law’s requirements.

    Gerard said he also was concerned that EPA had insisted the industry pay penalty fees to the agency for failing to blend cellulosic ethanol in gasoline, even though no cellulosic ethanol is commercially manufactured. “Mandating the use of fuels that do not exist is absurd on its face and inexcusably bad public policy,” Gerard said. He also called on EPA to resolve the problem of fraudulent renewable fuel credits, which have been sold to refiners under a program created by EPA.

    API represents more than 500 oil and natural gas companies, leaders of a technology-driven industry that supplies most of America's energy, supports 9.2 million U.S. jobs and 7.7 percent of the U.S. economy, delivers more than $86 million a day in revenue to our government, and, since 2000, has invested more than $2 trillion in U.S. capital projects to advance all forms of energy, including alternatives.