Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Mike Lee is pushing legislation to prohibit the reallocation of biofuel blending obligations on to larger refineries from smaller ones.
The Utah Republican’s bill comes as the White House and EPA weigh forcing larger refineries to make up for a slew of smaller refiners that received exemptions to statutory blending requirements. EPA allows small refiners to lobby for exemptions from blending requirements if they are economically harmed by the requirements.
The fight over reallocations splits two of President Donald Trump’s key constituencies, the agriculture and oil industries. Lee is taking the side of the oil industry, which argues that it’s unfair to impose increased blending on larger refiners to make up for the loss of small refinery exemptions.
“Nowhere in the Clean Air Act does it say that the swampy corn lobby can force Americans to pay more for their products,” Lee said in a post announcing his bill on X. “By jamming through more biofuels and environmental compliance costs, regulators are stifling US energy producers and jacking up the price of fuel.”
