The Obama administration is considering raising the biodiesel mandate in the 2014 Renewable Fuel Standard from the proposed 1.28 billion gallons, the oil industry's main lobbying group in Washington said Friday, citing its conversations with the White House Office of Management and Budget.
But the American Petroleum Institute said such an increase would be illegal under the Clean Air Act, which requires the Environmental Protection Agency to finalize each year's biodiesel mandate 14 months beforehand. That means the 2014 mandate should have been finalized by November 2012, said Bob Greco, the API's downstream group director.
"The Clean Air Act expressly compels EPA to provide a 14-month lead time when modifying the mandate," Greco wrote in a letter Friday to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. "Congress establishes statutory deadlines for a reason, [to] provide certainty to the regulated industries."
But Greco stopped short of saying whether the API, which has sought to repeal the RFS, would sue the EPA if it raises the mandate.
The final 2014 RFS is currently being reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget, which has given no timetable for when it will be released.
The EPA's proposed rule, met with much criticism from the biofuels industry, froze the 2014 biodiesel mandate at 1.28 billion gallons, the same as in the 2013 rule.
In addition, it cut the overall biofuels mandate to 15.21 billion gallons, down from 16.55 billion gallons in the 2013 rule, citing the inability of US fueling infrastructure to absorb higher blends of biofuels.
McCarthy has said publicly that the final rule's volumes likely will be higher than in the proposed rule, due to increased fuel consumption in the US.
The National Biodiesel Board in May had said it had gotten indications that the EPA would keep the 2014 biodiesel mandate at 1.28 billion gallons.
The biodiesel trade group has said that the proposed mandate has deflated the confidence of an industry coming off a record year in 2013, when more than 2 billion gallons of biodiesel were produced.
