Opinion ID: 4435003
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Final Agency Action Under Section 7607(b)(1)

Text: In 2016, various refiners petitioned EPA for a rulemaking to modify the point of obligation rule. The petitions urged that the need for a modification became evident in 2015, when EPA waived certain statutory volume requirements and concluded that changing economic conditions had made the requirements “impossible to achieve.” 2014–16 Rule, 80 Fed. Reg. at 77,422/2. In November 2017, EPA denied the rulemaking petitions on the ground that any current problems with the RFS program were manageable and that changing the point of obligation at this juncture would be disruptive. EPA Denial at 20 8–9, Alon J.A. 62–63. The refiners sought review of the denial in December 2017 and January 2018. As petitioners in this Court, they contend that the November 2017 denial constituted final agency action reviewable under section 7607(b)(1). We agree. As noted above, the first sentence of section 7607(b)(1) gives this Court exclusive jurisdiction to review any nationally applicable “final action” taken by EPA under the Clean Air Act. The parties agree that the denial of the rulemaking petitions was nationally applicable, final, and taken under the Clean Air Act. It was also agency “action” within the meaning of the statute. That word “bears the same meaning in [section 7607(b)(1)] that it does under the Administrative Procedure Act,” Whitman v. Am. Trucking Ass’ns, 531 U.S. 457, 478 (2001), which defines “agency” to include EPA, 5 U.S.C. § 551(1), and “agency action” to include “the whole or a part of an agency rule, order, license, sanction, relief, or the equivalent or denial thereof, or failure to act,” id. § 551(13) (emphases added). So, EPA’s denial of the petitions for rulemaking was a reviewable “action.” The petitions for review were timely. As a general matter, section 7607(b)(1) requires a petition for review to be filed within sixty days of when “notice of such promulgation, approval, or action appears in the Federal Register.” Here, the “action” at issue—denial of the petitions for rulemaking—was published in the Federal Register on November 22, 2017, and the petitions for review of that action were filed within sixty days of that date. Moreover, this conclusion does not depend on the after-arising provision. To the contrary, because the petitions for review were filed within sixty days of the “action” under review, the exception for “grounds arising after such sixtieth day” was not triggered. 21 Our caselaw confirms this framing of the jurisdictional issue. In Massachusetts v. EPA, 415 F.3d 50 (D.C. Cir. 2005), this Court held that EPA’s denial of a petition to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as air pollutants was itself “final action” reviewable under section 7607(b)(1). See id. at 53–54 (opinion of Randolph, J.); id. at 61 (Sentelle, J., concurring in the judgment). The Supreme Court reversed our judgment on the merits, but agreed that we had jurisdiction. Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007). In particular, the Court noted that section 7607(b)(1) “expressly permits review” of EPA’s “rejection of [a] rulemaking petition.” Id. at 520, 528; see also id. at 517 (section 7607(b)(1) affords “the right to challenge [this] agency action unlawfully withheld”). Likewise, in Natural Resources Defense Council v. EPA, 824 F.2d 1146 (D.C. Cir. 1987) (en banc) (NRDC), we held that a 1985 decision to withdraw proposed amendments to certain 1976 regulations—which we described as a “decision not to amend” the regulations—was “reviewable agency action” under section 7607(b)(1). Id. at 1150 (quotation marks omitted). We concluded that the petition for review at issue, which on its face challenged the 1985 withdrawal decision, was not, in substance, an untimely “‘back-door’ challenge to the 1976 regulations.” Id. On that point, we reasoned that the petitioners claimed legal errors in the 1985 withdrawal and sought vacatur only of that order. Likewise, in this case, the petitions for review filed in 2017 and 2018 raise no back-door challenge to the 2010 regulation: the petitions contend that EPA in 2017 arbitrarily refused to take account of changing economic conditions, and they seek vacatur only of the 2017 order denying a new rulemaking going forward. Background principles of administrative law reinforce our conclusion that the denial of a petition to modify a rule based on changed circumstances is itself a reviewable order. Ordinarily, the denial of a petition to amend or rescind a 22 regulation is judicially reviewable. See, e.g., NLRB Union v. FLRA, 834 F.2d 191, 195–96 (D.C. Cir. 1987). When the petition to amend attacks defects in the regulation as originally promulgated, and when the time limit for seeking review of the regulation has passed, questions can arise about whether the time limit is being improperly circumvented. In these circumstances, we have held that the petitioner cannot raise procedural challenges to the regulation, but can raise substantive arguments that the regulation is unauthorized by or conflicts with a statute. See id. at 196–97. But the circumvention concern does not even arise when the petitioner raises arguments about changed circumstances or new information. Those kinds of arguments—that recent developments compel the amendment of an older regulation— are always cognizable through review of the denial of a petition to amend, though they trigger an “extremely limited” review on the merits. Id. at 196. Our decision today harmonizes the judicial-review provisions of the Clean Air Act with this general background principle. EPA recognizes the general rule that, under the NLRB Union line of cases, the denial of a petition to amend a rule is a reviewable order, which supports both challenges based on recent developments and substantive challenges to the original regulation. Nonetheless, EPA urges a different rule where the applicable judicial-review provision contains a time limit for seeking review and an exception for grounds arising after the time limit, as in the Clean Air Act. In those circumstances, according to EPA, a challenge to the denial of a petition to amend is untimely—and the denial is thus entirely unreviewable—unless the after-arising provision is satisfied. EPA rests this conclusion on National Mining Ass’n v. Department of Interior, 70 F.3d 1345 (D.C. Cir. 1995), and American Road & Transportation Builders Ass’n v. EPA, 588 23 F.3d 1109 (D.C. Cir. 2009) (ARTBA), but neither decision supports its position. National Mining involved judicial review under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA), which requires petitions for review to be filed “within sixty days” of the agency action at issue “or after such date if the petition is based solely on grounds arising after the sixtieth day.” See 70 F.3d at 1350. In 1986, parties petitioned the Department of Interior to rescind a 1979 SMCRA regulation on two grounds. First, the petitioners argued that the rule was inconsistent with the statute—an argument attacking the regulation itself and “available” when the regulation was originally promulgated. See id. After the agency declined to rescind the rule, the challengers sought judicial review. We held that the after-arising provision made this first challenge untimely, by explicitly requiring challenges to a regulation either to be filed “within the statutory period” or to “meet the after-arising test.” Id. at 1350–51. At the same time, however, we held that the petitioners’ second challenge—to the agency’s 1986 decision refusing to “repeal” the regulation based on changed circumstances—was timely and reviewable. Id. at 1352. To be sure, we described the latter challenge as resting on “grounds that arose after the sixtieth day.” Id. But we failed to explain what jurisdictional theory that observation supported: a challenge to the 1979 regulation rendered timely by the after-arising exception; or a challenge, in substance as well as form, to the 1986 refusal to repeal, akin to the challenge that we held reviewable in NRDC. Instead, we simply concluded that, under the “limited scope of our review,” the agency did not “act[] unreasonably in denying the petition for rulemaking.” Id. at 1352–53. Thus, while National Mining blessed jurisdiction to review agency refusals to amend regulations based on changed factual circumstances, it did not 24 ultimately address what we clarify today—the precise statutory basis for that jurisdiction. ARTBA applied the reasoning of National Mining to the Clean Air Act, which also contains a time limit for judicial review and an exception for after-arising grounds. ARTBA involved a 2002 petition to amend 1997 regulations on the ground that they allowed states “to adopt precisely the kinds of regulations that the statute forbids.” 588 F.3d at 1110. As in National Mining, the challenge was thus a substantive attack on a regulation as originally promulgated. We held that, under National Mining, EPA’s “denial of a revision-seeking petition does not allow review of alleged substantive defects in the original rule even under the deferential standards applicable to review of such denials, outside the statutory limitations period running from the rule[’s] original promulgation.” Id. at 1113 (emphasis added). In other words, National Mining “require[d] us to treat ARTBA’s petition to EPA as a challenge to the regulations it sought revised.” Id. at 1110. As a result, dismissal was necessary unless the petition satisfied the exception for after-arising grounds, which it did not. See id. Neither decision controls here, where the 2017 and 2018 petitions for review challenge not the point of obligation regulation as originally promulgated in 2010, but the failure to amend the regulation in light of changed circumstances flagged by EPA in 2015. EPA rejected that argument in 2017, and the petitioners sought review of the rejection within sixty days. In substance as well as form, the challenge was to the 2017 refusal to amend, not to the underlying 2010 regulation. Under these circumstances, there was no risk of circumventing the original time limit. Therefore, there was also no reason to treat the 2010 promulgation and the 2017 refusal to amend as one-and-thesame agency action, despite binding APA definitions treating them as separate. 25 Precedent aside, EPA’s proposed approach—making the after-arising provision the exclusive vehicle for challenging refusals to amend regulations based on new information or changed circumstances—creates various difficulties. For one thing, there is a conceptual mismatch between that provision and these kinds of challenges. Though the after-arising exception and the opportunity to seek rule revision based on post-rulemaking events may seem similar, the first allows an intervening event to secure judicial review on the basis of defects extant at the time of the rulemaking, whereas the second allows review on the question whether intervening events have fatally undermined the original justification for the rule. The arrow of time runs forward, not backward, so it is at best awkward—and at worst incoherent—to speak of a later development rendering unlawful an earlier promulgation. Economic developments in 2015 may have made it arbitrary for EPA to adhere to the point of obligation rule in 2017, but they cannot have retroactively made arbitrary its promulgation in 2010. Even worse, the Clean Air Act’s after-arising provision, if used to judge the timeliness of challenges based on new information, would be difficult to apply, capriciously narrow, or both. To satisfy that provision, a petition for review must be both (i) based “solely” on after-arising grounds and (ii) filed “within sixty days after such grounds arise.” 42 U.S.C. § 7607(b)(1). Yet the case for changing an environmental regulation will almost never manifest itself at one discrete moment. Instead, it will accumulate progressively over time, as scientific knowledge advances or economic conditions change. And so, under EPA’s approach, the relevant filing deadlines would become practically unknowable. When did some environmental risk become serious and obvious enough to compel a rulemaking to strengthen an existing regulation? That will usually be a hard question, and it would be little short 26 of miraculous if the answer turned out to be on a date certain within sixty days of the filing of a petition for review, as required to satisfy the after-arising provision. In contrast, the approach we have sketched out produces simple questions and discernible deadlines: ask when EPA denied the rulemaking petition, then add sixty days. If possible, we should avoid trying to fix arbitrarily precise accrual dates for events that develop incrementally over time. See Nat’l R.R. Passenger Corp. v. Morgan, 536 U.S. 101, 115– 21 (2002). And we should avoid jurisdictional tests that are complex as opposed to straightforward. See, e.g., Hertz Corp. v. Friend, 559 U.S. 77, 94 (2010). Treating the denial of a petition to amend a rule based on changed circumstances as reviewable agency action honors both principles, while attempting to shoehorn such denials into the after-arising provision does the opposite. We acknowledge that, in Oljato Chapter of Navajo Tribe v. Train, 515 F.2d 654 (D.C. Cir. 1975), we assumed that the after-arising provision would govern review of orders denying petitions to modify EPA rules based on changed circumstances. But our only holdings were that such petitions must first be presented to EPA, id. at 666, and then are reviewable directly in the courts of appeals, id. at 657–65. Moreover, our assumption was understandable in context; the petitioners had missed the statutory deadline to file a petition for review (then thirty days), see id. at 657, so they pressed alternative jurisdictional theories (involving either district-court review or the after-arising provision) that would avoid that deadline. Furthermore, we expressly reserved the precise bounds of what constituted a petition based solely on after-arising grounds. See id. at 666–68. Finally, we stressed that review should generally be available “when new information casts doubt upon the validity of a [regulatory] standard.” Id. at 665. At the time, the 27 after-arising provision contained no separate deadline requiring a petition for review to be filed within sixty days of the after-arising ground. See id. at 657 n.3. So the difference between “direct review” of a regulation through the afterarising provision and review of a “refusal to revise” the regulation appeared largely semantic. See id. at 666. But, two years after Oljato was decided, Congress amended section 7607(b)(1) to include the separate filing deadline, see Pub. L. No. 95-95 § 305(c)(3), 91 Stat. 685, 776 (1977), which, as explained above, made the after-arising provision a singularly poor vehicle for securing the review that Oljato assumed would be readily available. After Oljato, we held in Group Against Smog & Pollution v. EPA, 665 F.2d 1284 (D.C. Cir. 1981), that the failure to challenge a 1974 regulation within the original sixty-day deadline did not bar “judicial review of the agency’s subsequent refusal to revise the standard on the basis of new information.” Id. at 1291. Quoting liberally from Oljato, we suggested that such review would proceed through the afterarising provision. Id. at 1289. But we permitted review even though the after-arising provision, as amended, could not have applied. The case involved comments filed with EPA in April 1977, which we treated as a petition for a rulemaking. Id. at 1290 & n.47. On April 13, 1978, EPA declined to amend the rule as requested. Id. at 1288. The ensuing petition for review was filed on June 12, 1978—more than a year after the technological changes discussed in the comments, but precisely sixty days after the refusal to amend. See id. Because the petition for review was not filed within sixty days of the asserted after-arising grounds, the after-arising provision plainly did not apply. So, review must have rested on the theory that the refusal to amend was itself a reviewable action triggering its own sixty-day filing window. 28 The approach we follow here—treating denials of rulemakings based on new facts as independently reviewable decisions—does not reduce the after-arising provision to surplusage. Our cases have recognized other circumstances triggering the after-arising provision, including judicial decisions that significantly “changed the legal landscape” faced by petitioners, Honeywell Int’l, Inc. v. EPA, 705 F.3d 470, 473 (D.C. Cir. 2013), and “the occurrence of an event that ripens a claim,” Coalition for Responsible Regulation v. EPA, 684 F.3d 102, 129 (D.C. Cir. 2012) (per curiam). In cases like these—where, for example, an intervening statute, regulation, or judicial decision extends old regulations to new parties—the after-arising ground is easily dated, the relevant filing deadlines are clear, and so the provision functions predictably. Moreover, where the after-arising provision does apply, it permits the petitioner to contend not only that changed circumstances warrant amending an existing regulation but also that the regulation was unlawful as originally promulgated. See, e.g., Honeywell, 705 F.3d at 473. For these reasons, we conclude that we have jurisdiction to consider the petitioners’ argument that EPA arbitrarily refused to amend the point of obligation rule based on the changed circumstances cited by the petitioners. 2. After-Arising Grounds Under Section 7607(b)(1) The February 2016 petitions for review, filed before EPA resolved any of the rulemaking petitions, rested on the alternative jurisdictional theory that EPA’s publication of the 2014–16 volume requirements constituted an after-arising ground within the meaning of section 7607(b)(1). Our conclusion above does not moot this question, because if this alternative theory were valid, then the petitioners could directly attack the point of obligation rule as originally promulgated. 29 Nonetheless, the petitioners have abandoned this theory of jurisdiction. In their merits briefs, they never actually attack the 2010 rule as originally promulgated; instead, they challenge only the 2017 denial of their rulemaking petitions. Moreover, in requesting relief, they do not ask us to set aside the 2010 rule, but only to “vacate the [2017] Denial[] and remand to EPA” for a rulemaking to change the point of obligation rule going forward. Alon Br. 58. And at oral argument, they disclaimed any challenge to the 2010 rule itself and confirmed that their only challenge was to EPA’s 2017 refusal to revise the point of obligation rule. See Rec. of Oral Argument at 2:18:50–2:19:15. 3. Mandatory Reconsideration Under Section 7607(d)(7)(B) Finally, the petitioners assert jurisdiction under section 7607(d)(7)(B), on the ground that EPA erroneously denied petitions for mandatory reconsideration of the point of obligation rule. To review, section 7607(d)(7)(B) provides in relevant part that only objections “raised . . . during the period for public comment” may be “raised during judicial review.” But if the objector “can demonstrate to the Administrator that it was impracticable to raise such objection within such time or if the grounds for such objection arose after the period for public comment (but within the time specified for judicial review) and if such objection is of central relevance to the outcome of the rule,” then EPA must “convene a proceeding for reconsideration of the rule,” and any refusal to do so is judicially reviewable. Here, the petitioners assert that the ground for their objections—EPA’s statements and actions in its 2014–16 volume regulation—arose “after the period for public comment” on the 2010 point of obligation rule, and that 30 the objections are “of central relevance to the outcome of the rule.” The petitioners misapprehend the statutory text and structure. Section 7607(d)(7)(B) does not extend the jurisdictional deadline to seek judicial review imposed in section 7607(b)(1); instead, it specifies a non-jurisdictional exhaustion requirement. See EPA v. EME Homer City Generation, L.P., 572 U.S. 489, 512 (2014). Its first sentence generally requires parties to raise objections “during the period for public comment” in order to later present them in court. Its second sentence allows a narrow exception when a centrally important objection cannot feasibly be raised during the comment period—either because “the grounds for such objection arose after the period for public comment,” or because commenting was otherwise “impracticable.” If an objection fits within this exception, the consequences are weighty: EPA must grant reconsideration and conduct a new, full-dress, notice-and-comment rulemaking. And if EPA denies reconsideration, the objector may seek judicial review. This “limited exception” to the normal exhaustion deadline, Util. Air Regulatory Grp. v. EPA, 744 F.3d 741, 746 (D.C. Cir. 2014), does not come with a free pass from the subsequent deadline to seek judicial review. To the contrary, the second sentence of section 7607(d)(7)(B) covers only objections that arise after the close of the comment period, yet within the time specified for judicial review. As noted above, that time for judicial review—sixty days from the promulgation of the final rule—is specified in section 7607(b)(1). Section 7607(d)(7)(B) does not enlarge that filing period, but merely fills a narrow gap within it: allowing orderly exhaustion of important objections that “first became known to the petitioner after the comment period ended, but before the period for petitioning for review expired.” Am. Petroleum Inst. v. Costle, 31 665 F.2d 1176, 1192 (D.C. Cir. 1981). We recognize that, as a textual matter, the statutory phrase “but within the time specified for review” qualifies the requirement that the grounds must have arisen “after the period for public comment,” but not the alternative requirement that “it was impracticable” to raise the objection “during the period for public comment.” However, the petitioners do not invoke the impracticability prong of section 7607(d)(7)(B). Moreover, we have construed that prong to cover instances when the final rule was not a logical outgrowth of the proposed rule, Clean Air Council v. Pruitt, 862 F.3d 1, 10 (D.C. Cir. 2017) (per curiam), which likewise involve problems during the period for public comment on or petitioning for review of the regulation itself— not problems that arise when circumstances change years or decades later. The petitioners argued in briefing that the “time specified for judicial review” referenced in section 7607(d)(7)(B) encompasses not only the initial sixty-day window after a rule’s promulgation, but also the secondary sixty-day limit from after-arising grounds in the fourth sentence of section 7607(b)(1). But as noted above, the petitioners abandoned at oral argument any reliance on the latter after-arising provision. Moreover, their theory would transform what we have described as a “limited” gap-filling provision, Util. Air Regulatory Grp., 744 F.3d at 746, into a perpetually looming threat of mandatory notice-and-comment reconsideration. Tellingly, the petitioners can cite no case employing section 7607(d)(7)(B)’s mandatory reconsideration procedure for objections that arose after the close of the initial window for judicial review. Their interpretation would “make a mockery of Congress’[s] careful effort to force potential litigants to bring challenges to a rule issued under this statute at the 32 outset.” Am. Rd. & Transp. Builders Ass’n v. EPA, 705 F.3d 453, 458 (D.C. Cir. 2013) (quotation marks omitted). Because the petitioners’ objections to the point of obligation rule did not arise within the initial window for judicial review of the 2010 point of obligation rule, but only some five years later, EPA properly denied mandatory reconsideration. B. Merits of Challenges to EPA’s Refusal to Revise the 2010 Point of Obligation Rule The Alon Petitioners offer an array of arguments to challenge the denial. None, however, is persuasive. We are reviewing EPA’s denial of a petition for rulemaking to amend the agency’s point of obligation rule. See supra Part IV.A.1. Accordingly, our review is “‘extremely limited’ and ‘highly deferential.’” New York v. EPA, 921 F.3d 257, 261 (D.C. Cir. 2019) (quoting Massachusetts, 549 U.S. at 527–28). “To set aside the agency’s judgment, [we] must conclude that EPA had not ‘adequately explained the facts and policy concerns relied on’ or that those facts did not ‘have some basis in the record.’” Id. (quoting WildEarth Guardians v. EPA, 751 F.3d 649, 653 (D.C. Cir. 2014)). We have no basis for such a conclusion. In denying the petition for rulemaking, EPA considered the “information currently before” it and determined “that the point of obligation is appropriately placed,” wrestling with the petitioners’ claims to the contrary. EPA Denial at 8, Alon J.A. 62. As is evident from our discussion below, EPA did so with enough thoroughness and reasonableness to satisfy our limited, deferential review. We start with EPA’s reasoning, which petitioners say is arbitrary and capricious. See 42 U.S.C. § 7607(d)(9)(A). 33 At the root of petitioners’ claim is a single premise: that the current point of obligation misaligns incentives by requiring those who refine fossil fuel, but not those who blend it, to meet the RFS program’s annual standards. In petitioners’ view, this misalignment forces refiners to purchase RINs to satisfy their RFS obligations, jacking up their costs, while giving windfall profits to blenders, who produce (but don’t consume) RINs. From this cycle of “RINsanity,” petitioners say, flow harms galore. Alon Reply Br. 25. Higher RIN prices not only threaten the financial viability of refiners (putting our economy and energy security in jeopardy), see, e.g., Alon Br. 46, but they incentivize RIN hoarding, which feeds market volatility, and gives some market participants an unfair leg up, see, e.g., id. at 40. The problem with this argument, however, is that EPA reasonably explained why, in its view, there is no misalignment in the RFS program. According to EPA, refiners “recover the cost of the RINs they purchase” by passing that cost along in the form of “higher prices for the petroleum based fuels they produce.” EPA Denial at 25, Alon J.A. 79. It grounded that conclusion in studies and data in the record. EPA and the authors of the pertinent studies took advantage of the fact that there are pairs of petroleum products in which one variant is subject to the RIN obligation (such variants being awkwardly called “obligated fuels”), whereas its not-quite-identical twin is not. For example, gasoline and diesel sold for use in the United States are “obligated,” whereas the same fuels sold for export are not. EPA Denial at 23, Alon J.A. 77. The same goes for domestic diesel fuel, which is “obligated,” and jet fuel, which is not. Christopher R. Knittel et al., The Pass-Through of RIN Prices to Wholesale and Retail Fuels Under the Renewable Fuel Standard 4 (July 2015) (Knittel), Alon J.A. 534. Comparing these pairs, the agency found that as RIN prices increased, a gap “open[ed] up between” the price for obligated 34 and unobligated fuels, a gap rather precisely matching the contemporaneous increase in RIN price—a strong indication that refiners were “recoup[ing] the costs associated with RIN prices.” EPA Denial at 23, Alon J.A. 77. Further confirming the price relationship, Professor Knittel and his colleagues found that 73% of a change in RIN price was passed through in the form of higher petroleum prices in the same day, 98% within two business days. Knittel 26, Alon J.A. 536. Reviewing the findings, EPA (accurately) reported that the papers by Knittel and his colleagues, and by Argus Consulting Services, “concluded that the RIN cost was generally included in the sale prices of obligated fuels.” EPA Denial at 25, Alon J.A. 79; see Knittel 26, Alon J.A. 536; Argus Consulting Services, Do Obligated Parties Include RINs Costs in Product Prices? 15 (Feb. 2017), Alon J.A. 564 (“There are very specific correlating price data for diesel that indicate that refiners . . . pass along the RINs cost . . . .”). A similar analysis, EPA concluded, reveals that just as (obligated) refiners do not pay excess costs, neither do blenders (who are not obligated under the program) nor integrated refiners (who perform their own in-house blending) reap windfall profits. True, both earn RINs, without purchasing them on the open market, by blending renewable fuel into petroleum blendstock. And true, as well, both can sell those RINs, enjoying whatever revenues market conditions and their own efficiencies permit. But as EPA quite accurately explained, this is only half the equation. In a competitive market there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and blenders and integrated refiners pay their tab just as others do; they just do so indirectly. To offer finished fuel without attached RINs at a competitive price, these entities must discount their blended 35 fuel by roughly the value of the RINs that they detached and kept for themselves. EPA Denial at 29, Alon J.A. 83. In other words, they “sell the finished transportation fuel at a loss,” but “maintain[] profitability through RIN sales.” Id. at 27–28, 29, Alon J.A. 81–82, 83. To be sure, in response to EPA’s proposed denial, commenters criticized the studies relied on by the agency. They contended, for example, that Professor Knittel and his colleagues erred by removing certain spreads from the analysis, by including others, and by pooling the results of various comparisons. See EPA Denial at 25, Alon J.A. 79. But petitioners have not raised these arguments here, and for that reason we do not consider them. While petitioners do complain that EPA relied on a “preliminary” analysis, see Alon Br. 54; Alon Reply Br. 23, that objection—whatever its persuasive force—says nothing about the other studies in the record (for example, by Professor Knittel et al.). Petitioners try, instead, to trace various refiner problems to EPA’s refusal to obligate blenders. They suggest that the alleged misplacement of the point of obligation causes bankruptcies, see, e.g., Alon Br. 3, 47, and inflicts economic hardship on small refineries, see, e.g., id. at 49, especially in the form of inflicting wildly disproportionate RIN acquisition costs on them, see, e.g., Alon Reply Br. 26. But some of these events occurred after EPA issued its denial, see, e.g., Alon Br. 49 (“following the Denial”); Alon Reply Br. 26 (“just after the Denial”), and are therefore not properly before us, see Environmental Defense Fund, Inc. v. Costle, 657 F.2d 275, 284 (D.C. Cir. 1981). More importantly, the claims presuppose that refiners cannot recover their RIN costs and that blenders reap windfall profits—suppositions that, as discussed above, EPA reasonably rejected. 36 Petitioners respond by plucking snippets from the denial, stringing them together with contrasting (bolded) conjunctions, and asserting that EPA’s “discussion of RIN prices” is “irreconcilably inconsistent.” Alon Br. 53. But we find no inconsistency on EPA’s part. Take one of petitioners’ examples: . . . RIN prices had no “significant impact on retail gasoline (E10) prices,” JA75; although “RINs . . . provide a price signal to consumers to help achieve . . . greater renewable fuel production and use,” JA75. Alon Br. 53 (second and third alterations in original) (quoting EPA Denial at 21, Alon J.A. 75). At first blush, the two comments, located on the very same page, seem inconsistent. How could RIN prices have no “significant impact” on retail prices, while, at the same time, provide “a price signal to consumers”? They can do so for the simple reason that the remarks refer to different things, a detail omitted from petitioners’ brief. This becomes apparent when the passage from which petitioners plucked their quotes (bolded and underscored below) is viewed in full: External, non-EPA assessments similarly concluded that increased RIN prices had not had a significant impact on retail gasoline (E10) prices. When RIN prices rise, the market price of the petroleum blendstocks produced by refineries also rise to cover the increased RIN costs, in much the same way as they would rise in response to higher crude oil prices. The effective price of renewable fuels (the price of the 37 renewable fuel with attached RIN minus the RIN price), however, decreases as RIN prices increase. When renewable fuels are blended into petroleum fuels these two price impacts generally offset one another for fuel blends such as E10 with a renewable content approximately equal to the required renewable fuel percentage standard. Higher RIN prices also generally result in higher prices for fuels with lower renewable content (such as E0 or petroleum diesel) and lower prices for fuels with higher renewable content (such as E85 or B20). The cost of the RIN therefore serves as a cross-subsidy, reducing the price of renewable fuels and increasing the price of petroleum based fuels in transportation fuel blends, thus incentivizing increased blending of renewable fuels into the transportation fuel pool. In this way the RINs also help provide a price signal to consumers to help achieve the Congressional goals of greater renewable fuel production and use. Fuels with higher renewable content are relatively cheaper to consumers than they would be absent high RIN prices, while fuels with lower renewable content are relatively more expensive when RIN prices are high. EPA Denial at 20–21, Alon J.A. 74–75. As we can see, the first statement (no significant price impact) is referring to the price of E10—a blend of 90% gasoline, 10% ethanol. As EPA explained, RINs work as a “cross-subsidy,” effectively taxing the use of petroleum-based fuels (e.g., gasoline) and subsidizing the use of renewables (e.g., ethanol) in making a blended transportation fuel like E10. EPA Denial at 21, Alon J.A. 75. 38 Before we dig in further, let’s take a step back. We must first recognize that EPA assumes that we are talking of a market where the RFS program, in effect, mandates minimum levels of renewables in marketed fuels, a mandate that necessarily impacts fuel prices. EPA is not making a claim that the mandatory inclusion of renewables in transportation fuel renders a gallon of gasoline lawfully purchased at the pump cheaper than it would have been absent the RFS program. To see what this means, start on the subsidy side: Suppose a blender can realize $2.25 on a gallon of ethanol with an attached RIN. If the blender can detach and sell that RIN for $0.05, then the net ethanol value is only $2.20—a $0.05 savings that in a competitive market should pass through to consumers. Now take the tax side: Because refiners must purchase RINs to satisfy the RFS obligations that arise from selling gasoline to blenders, a blender’s value for a gallon of gasoline may rise, due to the RFS program, from, say, $2.75 to $2.76. See Dallas Burkholder, Office of Transportation & Air Quality, EPA, A Preliminary Assessment of RIN Market Dynamics, RIN Prices, and Their Effects 17, EPA-HQ-OAR2016-0544-0009 (May 14, 2015), Alon J.A. 337. As a result of both price impacts, EPA described, blended fuels with a higher percentage of renewable content (e.g., 85% ethanol) will be cheaper than they would have been (absent the program), whereas fuels with a lower percentage of renewable content (e.g., pure gasoline) will be more costly than they would have been (absent the program). EPA Denial at 21, Alon J.A. 75. For E10, the “two price impacts generally offset one another,” so (back to the first statement) any change in RIN price generally has no “significant impact on” the E10 price. Id. But that’s just E10. There is an effect (of differing magnitude) on, say, E85 or E0. And that is where the second statement (“provide a price signal”) comes in: the signal arises 39 from a comparison of relative prices across the spectrum of transportation fuels. Again, as EPA explains, “[f]uels with higher renewable content are relatively cheaper to consumers than they would be absent high RIN prices, while fuels with lower renewable content are relatively more expensive when RIN prices are high.” Id. The two statements are consistent. Continuing the search for inconsistency, petitioners direct our attention to “EPA’s past pronouncements.” Alon Br. 50. In them, they see an irrational “about-face”—with EPA saying, at first, that “low RIN prices [were] a sign that the [RFS program] was working,” but claiming, now, “that high RIN prices are . . . desirable.” Id. at 51–52. Again, that’s not quite right. All EPA originally said was that when it first adopted the point of obligation, it did so based, in part, on its “expectation at that time that there would be an excess of RINs at low cost.” Regulation of Fuels and Fuel Additives: Changes to Renewable Fuel Standard Program, 74 Fed. Reg. 24,904, 24,963/2 (May 26, 2009) (proposed rule); see also Alon Br. 50 (citing EPA Denial at 13, Alon J.A. 67 (citing, in turn, 74 Fed. Reg. at 24,963)). EPA did not suggest that low RIN prices were a sign of market health—nor that high prices were a cause for alarm. In any case, EPA addressed petitioners’ concern over high RIN prices head on; the agency explicitly determined, on the current record, that “higher RIN prices” are not “indicative of a dysfunctional RIN market.” EPA Denial at 19, Alon J.A. 73. Rather, EPA explained, these prices accurately reflect the increasing cost associated with “getting ever-greater volumes of renewable fuel into the transportation fuel pool—the explicit goal [of] the RFS program.” Id. Put more bluntly, the increases in RIN prices are a completely understandable effect of the program’s ever-increasing pressure to expand renewable volumes. Pushing out along the supply curve takes the raw 40 market price of the RIN-eligible fuel steadily into higher realms—except to the extent that production innovations or economies may tend to lower costs. So far as appears, it has nothing to do with EPA’s allocation of the obligation. What about EPA’s concern, petitioners ask, that including blenders in the point of obligation would expand the number of obligated parties and, as a result, ratchet up the program’s complexity? Isn’t that hard to square with EPA’s claim, made years earlier, that “essentially all downstream blenders . . . are [already] regulated parties”? Alon Br. 42 (quoting 75 Fed. Reg. at 14,722/2). Again, not at all. Although the participation of all (or nearly all) blenders in the RIN market subjects them to RFS registration, recordkeeping, and reporting requirements, “the majority of these downstream [regulated] parties are . . . currently not obligated parties.” EPA Denial at 69, Alon J.A. 123 (emphasis added). As EPA explained, there “is a significant distinction between being a ‘regulated party’ and being an ‘obligated party.’” Id. “Obligated parties must meet all of [the requirements faced by regulated parties] and also calculate an annual renewable volume obligation, acquire the appropriate number of RINs in the market, practic[e] due diligence to ensure [the RINs’] validity, file annual compliance reports demonstrating compliance, and maintain records to that effect.” Id. at 69 n.205, Alon J.A. 123 (emphasis added); see, e.g., 40 C.F.R. §§ 80.1427(a), 80.1450(a), 80.1451(a), 80.1454(a). It was not unreasonable for EPA to conclude that imposing these burdens on additional entities would add to the program’s complexity (and therefore be undesirable absent an adequate offsetting benefit). Nor was it unreasonable to find that going down this route—overhauling a foundational element of the program— would create “uncertainty in the fuels marketplace.” EPA Denial at 2, Alon J.A. 56. As EPA said, “all parties regulated 41 in the RFS program have made significant investments and decisions about their participation in the program and their position in the market on the basis of the existing regulations, including the definition of obligated parties.” EPA Denial at 79, Alon J.A. 133. In these circumstances, it isn’t hard to imagine how changing course could throw players off their game. Of course, as petitioners note, uncertainty may have “plagued the RFS Program for years.” Alon Br. 37. But true or not, EPA needn’t pile on; the cure for uncertainty isn’t spawning more uncertainty. Taking a step back, petitioners launch a closing broadside against the entire process. They assert that EPA “disregarded this Court’s remand” in ACE, 864 F.3d at 737, and arbitrarily credited some comments over others. Alon Br. 31–32, 55–56. But the ACE remand required, at most, that the agency “address the point of obligation issue.” 864 F.3d at 737. And, as detailed throughout this opinion, the agency has done so reasonably, analyzing the data and explaining its decision. Nothing more was required.