Opinion ID: 6317007
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Sinclair and the EPA Decision on Remand

Text: HollyFrontier and Sinclair then petitioned this court for review of the EPA’s denials of their respective petitions. In Sinclair Wyo. Ref. Co. v. EPA, we held that the EPA—in the context of denying Sinclair’s petitions—interpreted “disproportionate economic hardship” too stringently by requiring refineries to demonstrate an existential threat to their viability. 887 F.3d 986, 999 (10th Cir. 2017). As a result, we granted Sinclair’s petition for review, vacated the EPA’s 2014 decisions for Sinclair’s two Wyoming refineries, and remanded for further proceedings. Because the EPA denied Sinclair’s and HollyFrontier’s 2015 petitions for a small refinery exemption on the same basis, we also granted EPA’s voluntary request for remand and vacatur of those petitions. On remand from this court, the EPA concluded that Sinclair and HollyFrontier were now entitled to small refinery exemptions. The EPA then turned to the appropriate remedy. During this lengthy administrative and judicial process, the facilities accumulated sufficient RINs to meet their respective 2014 and/or 2015 obligations. But by the time of this second agency decision, the RINs expired and were now “worthless.” App’x Vol. III at 908. The EPA explained it used its “discretion to find another way to give meaningful value to those RINs.” Id. It chose to “replicat[e] as closely as possible the situation that would have existed” had the exemptions been issued before Sinclair. Id. Therefore, the EPA decided to “un-retire” the RINs these refineries used for their 2014 and 2015 compliance and return them to each refinery. Id. It did so by exchanging each refinery’s expired RINs on a one-for-one basis with trackable 2018 RINs. The 6 Appellate Case: 19-9532 Document: 010110648841 Date Filed: 02/23/2022 Page: 7 EPA’s remedy allowed each small refinery to replace expired RINs previously used for RFS compliance with the same number of unexpired RINs.