After years of fighting the Renewable Fuel Standard — in courts, in Congress and in the public sphere — the oil industry may have won a reprieve in 2014, with the US Environmental Protection Agency proposing to scale back, for the first time, its biofuels blending mandate. But while this round may have gone to “Big Oil,” the greater fight over the RFS remains unsettled, writes Herman Wang, columnist for energy information service Platts.
Nobody is quite sure how the EPA will administer the rule in years going forward, leaving both the oil industry and biofuels producers facing significant uncertainties, Wang writes in a Dec. 30 column.
The EPA has yet to finalize its 2014 proposal, and the agency has gotten earfuls from both sides on whether its intended cut to the mandate should stand, Wang writes.
