CVI CVR Energy Inc

The Renewable Fuels Association petitioned the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday to rehear a case from November that reversed six of the EPA's small refinery exemption denials from this past summer, arguing that the panel "erred" in declining to transfer the nationally applicable case over to its proper venue in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The judgment this past fall was the first time a court ruled on the agency's decision in July to deny 26 petitions for RFS relief, a move that left only two outstanding petitions from the 2018 compliance year.

The panel, which took on the case after denying an EPA petition from September to change venue over to the D.C. Circuit, ultimately found in a 2-1 decision that two key portions of precedent that the agency relied on in making its determinations were "so implausible as applied to petitioners that [they] cannot be ascribed to a difference in view or agency expertise."

Dissenting Judge Patrick Higginbotham, however, argued that the court "inappropriately" offered a ruling on venue in the months prior despite the "common sense" reading of the law that the other four regional courts operated under.

The regional court ruling ultimately affected the six refineries that filed within that circuit: Allegiance Refining's facility in San Antonio, Texas; Calumet's refinery in Shreveport, Louisiana; CVR Energy's in Wynnewood, Oklahoma; Ergon Refining's locations in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Newell, West Virginia; and Placid Refining's refinery in Port Allen, Louisiana.

And since the court remanded those six petitions back to the EPA, each refinery has continued to operate under temporary small refinery exemptions offered to them by the court in February.

RFA argued in their court filing Monday that the decision from September to hear the case in the Fifth Circuit "conflicts" with precedent on similar matters set within that court itself and in its sister courts.

And even though the court made that decision citing refinery-specific data that was considered by EPA when denying SREs, RFA said, "the core determinations behind the denials--a statutory interpretation and an economic analysis of a nationwide market--have nationwide scope and effect."

"Congress designed the Clean Air Act's venue provision to ensure that issues with national implications are decided with the benefit of the D.C. Circuit's administrative law expertise and without the risk of inconsistent judicial determinations creating a patchwork regulatory scheme," the group said in its petition.

The panel's decision ultimately "contravenes these goals," the group added, and "narrows the conditions for when transfer to the D.C. Circuit is required in a manner that is not supported by the statute or this court's precedent."

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--Reporting by Patrick Newkumet, pnewkumet@opisnet.com; editing by Jordan Godwin, jgodwin@opisnet.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 09, 2024 12:17 ET (17:17 GMT)

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