The U.S. Supreme Court plans to hear appeals on April 27 on the ruling against Oklahoma’s Wynnewood refinery in a fight over mandated biofuels production.
The case involves the 2020 ruling by the 10th U.S. Court of Appeals in Denver which upheld the mandates against small refineries that had obtained waivers.
The Wynnewood Refining Co., LLC along with HollyFrontier Cheyenne Refining, LLC, HollyFrontier Refining & Marketing, LLC and HollyFrontier Woods Cross Refining, LLC appealed the decision in a lawsuit brought by the Renewable Fuels Association, the American Coalition for Ethanol, the National Growers Association and the National Farmers Union.
The Wynnewood Refining company is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Carl Icahn-owned CVR Refining LLC.
At the heart of the issue is whether the Denver Federal Appeals Court properly ruled that small refineries are disqualified from hardship exemptions to the Renewable Fuel Standard program unless they have a continuous and unbroken history of such exemptions during all the years of the RFS program.
Congress granted them a blanket exemption until 2011 and directed the Environmental Protection Agency to extend the exemption for two more years for small refineries that would suffer economic hardship for production of ethanol or biofuels.