Ethanol mandate for 2017 nears finalization

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said Thursday that it received from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the final volume mandate for fuel refiners to blend ethanol and other biofuels into traditional oil-based fuels like gasoline. The OMB review is the final step before the EPA can formally make the volume mandates final. It is required by law to establish the mandate by Nov. 30 of each year, but it has rarely met that deadline in recent years. The EPA proposed in May to require that 18.8 billion gallons of biofuels be blended into the fuel supply in 2017, up to 14.8 billion gallons of which can be basic, corn-based ethanol. The proposed level was higher than the expected ethanol production volume for 2016 but still lower than the amount that Congress asked the EPA to set when it wrote the renewable fuel standard in 2007. The agency used a waiver provision written into the law to propose the level...more