WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 (UPI) -- The American Petroleum Institute said it filed a lawsuit challenging a mandate for ethanol set by the Environmental Protection Agency.
API announced it filed a lawsuit with the District of Columbia Circuit Court challenges the EPA's Renewable Fuels mandate. It said a mandate requiring refiners to use 4 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol this year is unrealistic because that much ethanol isn't available.
"EPA's unrealistic ethanol mandates for 2013 are simply bad public policy," Harry Ng, API vice president and general counsel, said in a statement Tuesday. "EPA issued this year's requirements nine months late and has once again mandated significantly more cellulosic ethanol than is available in the marketplace."
There was no statement from the EPA. Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association, criticized the lobby group's challenge.
"This is another frivolous effort by API to abuse the court system in their slavish effort to repeal a public policy that is working for farmers, gasoline marketers, and consumers," he said in a statement. "This is a lawsuit in search of a problem."
The U.S. Supreme Court in June declined to hear a case against ethanol fuel blends.
