Tom Creery
Analyst · JP Morgan.
So, Phil, I get that dubious distinction of trying to figure out where RINs are going this year, so. But what we've seen -- let me start by saying what we've seen in the market so far. I think, when you say why are RINs rising, I think, it’s our opinion that without SREs and with declining gasoline demand, there is a fear in the marketplace that we're going to be short of reaching the 15 billion gallons of D6 RINs that are required. And as a result, what's going to happen is the people are going to start using D4s to retire D6 obligations. And we can see that in the marketplaces, because D4 -- D6s are climbing, getting closer to D6 all the time that the spread is a lot less than it was before. So, then that maybe the question, what the hell's happening with D4s? And that's a lot to do with rising soybean prices and the soybean price has been going up. What we've seen is on bushel barrel -- bushel basis, it's gone from $9 to $14 a bushel, and that's basically because of China. And as they replenish their pig population from the swine flu outbreak, they're having a higher demand of soybean. We're also seeing some weather impacting South American supply. So going forward, there's a lot of that is already baked into the market. And those are the main factors that driven the wind price to where it is now. I think, in the event that we get more gasoline demand, and there's more D6 RINs generated, as a result, what's that's going to do is increase the supply and help temper the prices from going any further on the D6s. And then, the D4s are just going to do their own thing on the basis of the BOHO spread as it moves forward. So, that's going to be more of a relationship-driven than a political decision at this point in time. So, I think, we've seen big increases on the D6s and the D4s to date. I don't think, we're going to see those kinds of increases as we go through the year, as a lot of these factors are already built into the marketplace.