SAVE OUR JOBS!
REFINERY WORKERS ASK TRUMP TO KILL PROFIT-KILLING RULE:
TRAINER » Not even a torrential downpour Monday morning could undermine the message from hundreds of refinery workers at Monroe Energy, directed at President Trump: Fix the Renewable Fuel Standard that puts the financial burden of mixing renewables into fuel mix onto the refineries — and save their jobs.
That burden, argued Monday by U.S. Rep. Pat Meehan, R-7 of Chadds Ford, U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, R-1 of Philadelphia, and U.S. Rep. Ryan Costello, R-6 of Chester County, among many others, is cutting into the profits of Monroe to a damaging extent.
“With a stroke of the pen, President Trump can secure hundreds of thousands of American jobs,” said Jeff Warmann, chief executive of Monroe Energy. “With that unleashing money that we can (invest) in our refineries.”
“Preserving these facilities play a vital role in our national security.”
The Environment Protection Agency has instituted a verification system to track the implementation of renewables. A credit system, called Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs), places the onus of compliance is upon the refineries rather than the blenders.
Both Democrats and Republicans agreed Monday that the system is backwards.
“All it is doing is hurting the working men and women, it’s hurting all of you,” Brady said. “It’s making the rich richer, which is totally ridiculous. Here comes some kind of standard that now is hurting you, it’s taking away your livelihood, but we’re not going to let this happen. We’re going to work together.”
Meehan said it was about “fundamental fairness.”
“You talk about manufacturing, you talk about the ability to create to create good, family-sustaining jobs, not just here, but all across the regions,” Meehan said, addressing his plea directly to Trump, whose has reiterated a commitment to sustaining manufacturing jobs in the United States.
“This is manufacturing, we don’t have to bring it back, it’s here today,” Meehan said.
The worry, further illustrated in an op-ed coauthored by former Govs. Tom Corbett and Ed Rendell in September, is that refineries will be unable to meet demand pending national emergencies, a devastating hurricane for instance, because the domestic suppliers have been saddled with the high costs of RINs.
RINs are created when feedstock, such as corn starch, sugarcane, soybean oil and Cellulosic biomass are added to the fuel mixture to make ethanol, biodiesel and other heating oils. The credits are used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to verify the use of renewables in the fuel mix.
“We hope that President Trump will see that the RFS desperately needs reform, that it’s a primary example that was set out as a good idea back in the early 2000s, but has gone totally awry both in the volume amount and its application,” Warmann said.
In 2012, the cost of RINs were 2 to 3 cents, versus more than 80 cents today. Warmann said Monroe is hemorrhaging as much as $500,000 a day for RINs. Monroe Energy posted a $126 million loss in 2016 — a $46 million loss in the fourth quarter.
The RINs were essentially meant to track the ethanol and other biofuels from the producer to the blender, but the inclusion of speculators, Wall Street and hedge funds have taken advantage of an unregulated system.
Speakers argued Monday that the unregulated marketplace has given way to massive heating oil conglomerates that are pricing out the more boutique, merchant and small refineries.
To put the daily costs in perspective, Delta Air Lines purchased the idled ConocoPhillips refinery in 2012 for $150 million.
“We’ve got the big oil and speculators who have come in and now those 8-cent RINs are now as high as $1.30,” Meehan said. “When you’re paying half-a-million dollars a day just to let a speculative market take care of itself, you can’t compete with a bag of rocks on your back!”
“We can compete if we’re on an event playing field.”
Anthony Gallagher, the business manager of the Steamfitters Local 420, received a warm round of applause from refinery workers as he took the stage. He put it simply: “This is about the human beings.”
“I witnessed firsthand guys marching into the firehouse the day the refinery was closing, I saw the looks on their faces as they walked out. There’s nothing more disparaging than that,” Gallagher said. “It’s not about winners and losers with this issues, this is about human beings.
“We’re here for a reason,” Gallagher said, as the rain continued to beat down. “We need these jobs.”