Senator Grassley tries to work around Senator Cruz’s RFS-based confirmation vote block

In Washington, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley is seeking a workaround with Senate colleagues to move forward with the confirmation of the proposed Under Secretary of Agriculture for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services at the USDA who has been kept from a vote due to a block by Senator Ted Cruz seeking to reform RIN policy under the Renewable Fuels Standard. Grassley released an internal analysis earlier this week, which corroborates numerous independent studies regarding the RFS and the PES bankruptcy, showing no link between the success of refineries and RIN costs.

While Grassley has suggested multiple ways to lower RIN costs, including increased market transparency to reduce speculation and making E15 available year-round, independent analyses do not support the claim that the PES bankruptcy was due to the RFS. The EPA in November 2017 found, “After reviewing the available data, EPA has concluded that refiners are generally able to recover the cost of RINs in the prices they receive for their refined products, and therefore high RIN prices do not cause significant harm to refiners.”