Olerex hit with €6 million fine for biofuel violations – alleged market distortion
Estonian fuel retailer Olerex has been hit with a €6 million fine after once again being found to have violated Estonia’s biofuel regulations, investigative weekly Eesti Ekspress wrote.
The development comes just days after the Supreme Court upheld a previous penalty of €300,000, for failing to meet biofuel obligations back in 2022.
The newest fine stems from Olerex’s use of used cooking oils (UCOs) in fuel.
While UCOs are reportedly permitted in meeting biofuel requirements, this is only within a set limit.
In 2022, Olerex had exceeded this limit without properly accounting for the excess.
The violation was discovered by the Environmental Board (Keskkonnaamet) in March 2023, in the course of an audit.
The company’s repeated violations played a key role in the decision to impose the new and much heftier €6-million fine.
The Environmental Board noted that Olerex’s actions had brought it significant financial savings, which in turn gave the company an unfair competitive advantage.
The decision states:
The obligations arising from the Liquid Fuel Act are supposed to be fulfilled by all participants in the fuel market, and the economic benefit obtained by Olerex’s violation endangers fair competition in the fuel market of the Republic of Estonia.
Olerex’s lawyer, Oliver Nääs, confirmed the company will be challenging the decision.
He said that Olerex had made efforts to comply in 2023, providing regular updates on how it planned to meet its biofuel obligations.
Nääs also criticized the regulations, saying that their ambiguity led to confusion.
He said:
Olerex came under the scrutiny of government agencies on the fulfillment of its 2022 biofuel obligation and so tried to be meticulously correct in 2023, providing information throughout the year on how it planned to meet the biofuel obligation.
“No objections were made to Olerex within the scope of this supervisory procedure, yet the Environmental Board later concluded that the requirements had not been met,” Nääs continued.
He concluded,
In our view, this serves to demonstrate vividly just how ambiguously the fulfillment of this biofuel obligation gets regulated, given that even the state itself lacks a clear understanding,
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Olerex hit with €6 million fine for biofuel violations – alleged market distortion, source
