Oil-patch Senators opposed to the nation’s biofuels mandate met with President Trump at the White House last week to try to talk Trump out of his support for the Renewable Fuels Standard and the ethanol industry. Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz says in a release that the meeting with President Trump and several oil-patch GOP senators to seek RFS relief was “productive.” The White House told Bloomberg news that Trump understands both camps-oil refiners and rural America.Cruz had been holding up the nomination of Iowa Ag Secretary Bill Northey to a top USDA post over the EPA chief Scott Pruitt’s decision last month to dump a proposed further tightening of biofuels volumes next year. Renewable Fuels Association chief Bob Dinneen was asked earlier about Cruz’s ‘hold’ on Northey’s nomination:
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Top Senate ethanol ally Chuck Grassley of Iowa says Cruz has lost leverage on the RFS until next year when EPA will have to develop volume requirements for 2019. Plus any RFS statute change would take an act of Congress, where Grassley feels ethanol state lawmakers still hold sway. And as for Bill Northey, RFA’s Bob Dinneen offers this:
But the RFS fight is unlikely to end, anytime soon. Texas GOP Governor Greg Abbott is asking the EPA to lower the amount of obligated biofuel to provide relief to refiners, while Grassley refuses to back down on the RFS or nominee Bill Northey.