March 20, 2013
BY Ron Kotrba
The American Petroleum Institute is up to its same old tricks, spending millions and millions of dollars fighting renewable fuels with scare tactics instead of complying with the law designed to increase energy and national security, improve the environmental footprint of our fuels and advance the transportation fuels industry out of the 20th Century.
This time, it has commissioned NERA Economic Consulting to “study” the impacts of the renewable fuel standard. You can access the material here, but its main points are that “continued implementation of the RFS would be severe, including an almost $800 billion decrease in U.S. GDP; a $580 billion decrease in take-home pay for American workers; a 300 percent increase in the cost of manufacturing diesel, and a 30 percent rise in the cost of making gasoline, which could result in rationing and other disruptions in the transportation sector; and the unintended consequence of encouraging export of refined products to comply with the law.”
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When fuel prices reach near all-time highs every couple of months, going back years in time, oil companies continually manage to achieve record profits; and only when renewable fuels are part of the conversation does the API contrive this so-called concern about prices at the pump. It’s a sham, and it’s blatantly obvious—I just hope members in Congress see this latest attempt for what it really is.
Fuels America, a coalition of organizations committed to protecting the RFS, had this to say about the API’s latest attempt to discredit the renewable fuels industries and the thousands of hard-working men and women working to evolve the U.S. energy sector.
“As sure as moon waxes and wanes, the American Petroleum Institute buys studies to support their self-interested views. Their most recent study predictably attacks their main competitor: renewable fuel. The oil industry has been complaining about the renewable fuel standard, yet they are the ones who failed to invest in the infrastructure necessary to avoid the compliance mechanism that has them up in arms. Everyone knew this investment would be necessary many years ago, and in typical form, the oil industry is threatening to pass the cost of their own inaction on to consumers. Since oil price is set on the world market, what you pay at the pump relies on what happens to world events that we cannot control, like the Cyprus bailout that is being debated today. If we want lower and more stable prices at the pump, we have to wean our way off of oil, and replace it with inexpensive and homegrown renewable fuel.”
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The API says the RFS program is “broken and a threat to consumers.” As I’ve said in this blog many times before, the American consumers are smart enough to know where the real threat lies.
I would like to know how many API members are satisfied with their organization’s leadership. It would not surprise me if many of them support a major leadership and directional change at API so the renewable fuels industries and the oil companies, some of which own stake in renewable fuels production assets, can begin working together in a civil manner that benefits not only the renewable fuels industries and oil companies, but ultimately American consumers, the environment, U.S. national and energy security, and the economy. Clearly under the current leadership, this cannot be achieved.