WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. EPA has approved a plan submitted by Argentinean biodiesel producers allowing them to demonstrate their compliance with Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) requirements – a move met with displeasure by those with the National Biodiesel Board (NBB).

In its decision announced Jan. 27, the EPA stated “the approved plan enhances existing regulatory oversight requirements currently applied to qualifying renewable fuels being imported from Argentina.”

NBB officials said Jan. 30 the EPA’s action will streamline Argentina’s access to U.S. markets. The organization estimated as many as 600 million gallons of biodiesel from the South American country could enter the United States. “The EPA decided to make a non-urgent, discretionary decision without notice or public comment to fast-track more subsidized Argentinean biofuel into this (RFS) program,” said Joe Jobe, CEO of the NBB. “It makes absolutely no sense.”

Ben Wootton, former CEO of Keystone Biofuels, which filed for bankruptcy late last year, said the decision is worrisome for remaining producers. Wootton is an NBB governing board member.

“I still fight for them every day,” he said. “Opening up the fast-track on that and having the influx of hundreds of millions of gallons of biodiesel into our market right now, I’m very concerned.”

The EPA’s decision came in response to a coalition of Argentinean renewable fuel producers – Camara Argentina de Biocombustibles, or CARBIO – who submitted a plan to show compliance with the RFS. Under the plan, importers are required to keep records demonstrating the feedstocks used to produce the fuel coming from qualified land, the agency stated.

The plan also requires an independent third party to annually monitor the entire biofuel supply chain.

The EPA decision doesn’t mean the U.S. market will be flooded by Argentina biofuel, said Byron Bunker, director of the EPA’s Compliance Division, Office of Transportation and Air Quality.

“Producers decide where to sell their feedstock based on multiple market factors, including where they can get the highest price,” he explained. “The CARBIO program will be implemented on this year’s soybean harvest, which will start sometime in March and run through June or July.

“The earliest that fuel might be exported under this program is later this fall, after soybeans currently in the field have been harvested, crushed and refined to produce biodiesel.”

The CARBIO program doesn’t lower RFS sustainability standards for Argentina’s biodiesel producers and has no connection to the agency’s RFS proposals, Bunker stated. The agency is committed to getting the RFS program “back on track,” he said.

The EPA expects to make an announcement on RFS mandates for corn-based ethanol and biodiesel for 2014, 2015 and 2016 this spring, he added.

The industry is in the second year of functioning without an RFS policy, explained Anne Steckel, NBB vice president of federal affairs. “As the delay has dragged on, it really seems like there’s this ‘ho-hum’ attitude in some corners that it’s just business as usual and that people aren’t affected by not releasing these RFS numbers,” she said. “But we’re already going backwards and companies are filing for bankruptcy.

“We really want to be very clear that this uncertainty and lack of RFS policy is severely damaging the biodiesel industry, which is the only EPA-designated advanced biofuel under the RFS with nationwide commercial scale production.”