ATA Joins AFPM in Lawsuit to Block Oregon Fuel Standards

American Trucking Associations joined the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers and the Consumer Energy Alliance in suing the state of Oregon to block the state’s low-carbon fuel standards.

“Just as trucking is the lifeblood of our economy, for the foreseeable future, diesel fuel is the lifeblood of the trucking industry,” ATA President and CEO Bill Graves said in a March 23 statement. “Anything that unnecessarily raises the cost of fuel will not just hurt the trucking industry, but will also hurt consumers everywhere in the form of higher prices for food, clothing and other consumer goods.”

Oregon’s “Clean Fuels Program,” which seeks to regulate the entire carbon lifecycle of fuel sold in the state, provides unfair benefits to Oregon’s biofuels industry and harms out-of-state refiners and producers in violation of the Commerce Clause, ATA said.

“The Oregon program is set up to give a big boost to Oregon’s small biofuel industry, without reducing net greenhouse gas emissions, and at the expense of higher fuel costs for everyone,” said ATA Vice President for Energy and Environmental Affairs Glen Kedzie. “Unfortunately for Oregon, the Constitution doesn’t allow states to set up these kinds of trade barriers in order to promote in-state businesses, nor does it allow Oregon to regulate how fuel is produced in other states.”

Oregon’s new standard would raise fuel prices across the state while doing nothing to reduce overall greenhouse emissions, ATA said.

“A similar standard implemented in neighboring California is projected to add roughly $1.89 per gallon wholesale by 2020,” Kedzie said, citing a California Trucking Association study.

“As an Oregonian and an owner of a trucking company, I’m concerned that this new standard will make doing business here needlessly costly,” said former ATA Chairman Mike Card, president of Combined Transport, Central Point, Ore. “The fuels that trucking depends on will be made more expensive by this regulation that won’t reduce overall greenhouse emissions.”

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, also challenges Oregon’s CFP as preempted under the Federal Clean Air Act.

American Trucking Associations, based in Arlington, Va., is a national trade association for the trucking industry.