The Obama administration held at least one high-level meeting in June with representatives from the oil and refining industries to discuss the ongoing issue of fraudulent biofuel credits, several sources told Platts on Monday.
Representatives from ExxonMobil, Marathon Oil, the refining company Tesoro and the trade groups American Petroleum Institute and American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers met June 13 with Heather Zichal, deputy assistant to the president for energy and climate change. Also at the meeting was Gina McCarthy, assistant administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Air and Radiation, according to a source familiar with the meeting.
Zichal referenced the meeting in comments during a conference call Monday to discuss grants the Obama administration is making to fund research and commercialization of advanced drop-in biofuels.
"Long story short, we have heard from industry some concerns about the RIN credit program," Zichal said. "We sat down with them, including the biofuels industry, which also agrees there is a challenge here. We are in the very early stages to see how we can resolve some of the issues surrounding RIN credits. We all agree this is a problem and we're working collectively to resolve this issue as quickly as possible."
The administration and representatives from the oil and biofuels industries have been discussing how to address concerns arising from cases where some persons sold fraudulent biofuels credits, called RINs, to refiners and other "obligated parties" as defined by the US Renewable Fuel Standard. Refiners buy the credits to satisfy requirements that they are blending a certain percentage of biofuels into the US transportation fuel supply.
The US has charged several companies with selling bogus RIN credits. Two weeks ago, a federal jury convicted a Maryland man behind a scheme to defraud oil companies and traders by selling them $9.1 million in fake renewable-fuel credits without producing a drop of biodiesel.
At the June 13 meeting, held at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, oil industry officials pushed for the EPA to operate "a more robust certification and validation program" for RINs, according to one source.
Some of the attendees also pushed for an agreement that obligated parties that purchase fraudulent RINs in good faith should not have to purchase new RINs to make up for the bad ones, one source said.
