OREANDA-NEWS. March 13, 2018. President Donald Trump cut refiner costs to comply with US biofuel mandates last week even without brokering a deal between oil and agriculture groups.

Uncertainty following meetings among senators, industry leaders and the White House led the price of ethanol-generated renewable identification numbers (RINs) used to prove compliance with the program to their largest single-day drop in a year. The 8.25?/RIN decline on 2 March fell short of a 10.25?/RIN plunge roughly one year earlier inspired by the same unease over White House interest in the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).

All sides remained implacable over how best to reduce RIN prices following two rounds of February deal making toward a new compromise the White House may not have the power to provide.

The RFS requires refiners, importers and other companies ensure each year that minimum volumes of renewables blend into the fuel they add to the US transportation supply. Companies acquire RINs needed to prove compliance by blending or by purchasing the credits from others.

The refiners most reliant on purchasing RINs, including Valero, PBF Energy and other merchant refiners, insist the mandates drive unsustainable compliance costs and pressured Pennsylvania refinery Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) into a bankruptcy demanding immediate relief. Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Patrick Toomey (R-Pennsylvania) have carried this argument to the White House.

Agriculture groups counter that giving more market share to ethanol and other renewable fuel blends would drive down refiner costs and provide support for US farmers facing their own crises. Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) have shouldered this argument.

The conflict deadlocks industries representing two supporters of the president — farmers and manufacturers — ahead of Congressional elections and with added urgency for Philadelphia refinery workers.

"The noose is getting tighter around the people who rely on PES," United SteelWorkers Local 10-1 president Ryan O'Callaghan said.

Trump on 1 March at the end of a closed-door session with four senators and company executives suggested a two-year restriction on the price of RINs as temporary relief for that market, according to attendees and three sources briefed on the meeting. The remark followed objections that it would take too long for sales of higher-ethanol gasoline blends sought by the ethanol industry and other businesses to drive down the costs of the program.

But agriculture groups, fuel blenders and some refiners reject that idea, and it was not clear how the executive branch could legally offer such a price cap.

The concept would rely on an Environmental Protection Agency-created alternative credit, available at 10?/RIN or another lower price, that obligated parties could buy in lieu of actual blending-generated RINs. The proposal mimics provisions in the law that have repeatedly generated credits for cellulosic ethanol in the absence of sufficient volume for blending.

But statutes creating the program allow EPA to reduce required volumes, not prices, for other biofuels. An alternative RIN would face immediate legal challenges.

So too would changes making it easier to sell 15pc ethanol blends in the summer. Ubiquitous 10pc ethanol blends have a federal waiver of clean air rules restrictions on how easily the fuel evaporates that allow E10's sale in certain major markets during summer months. But the law specifically designates 10pc ethanol for this waiver, making it unclear how the EPA could extend the exemption to a new fuel without Congressional action.