US Biodiesel Producers Lose Court Challenge over Argentinian Imports

by Meghan Gordon (Platts) A US appeals court Tuesday dismissed a challenge by American biodiesel producers to the Environmental Protection Agency's decision allowing Argentinian biodiesel to qualify for US renewable fuel credits.

The National Biodiesel Board trade group had argued that EPA was not holding Argentinian producers to the same environmental standards as others and that US producers would suffer injury as a result of increased competition from imports.

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with EPA, finding its methodology more than sufficient for ensuring that the imported fuel was not made from crops grown on land deforested after 2007, a key requirement of Congress' Renewable Fuel Standard enacted in that year.

Under a tracking program approved by EPA in January 2015, Carbio, Argentina's biodiesel and soybean trade group, identifies lands cleared or cultivated before 2007 using historical NASA satellite images and designates entire zip codes as either eligible or ineligible.

NBB also argued that EPA should have subjected the Carbio approval to public notice and comments, but the DC Circuit found it was not a broader rulemaking that requires those regulatory steps. READ MORE