Small refinery exemptions were not the topic of an EPA hearing Friday in Michigan, but many witnesses used precious seconds of their allotted three minutes to comment on how they are impacting an already stressed ethanol industry.

“While RFS small refinery exemptions (SREs) are not the explicit subject of this rulemaking or today’s hearing, we feel compelled to remind EPA that continued abuse of the SRE program would significantly undermine the ethanol market expansion intended to result from finally allowing year-round sales of E15,” said Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) president and CEO Geoff Cooper. “In other words, continued SREs threaten to derail the central objective of the rulemaking under consideration today.”

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds got to talk for 12 minutes and spent a good amount of that time addressing the harm caused by SREs.