RIN Trade Agreement Template Available

STREATOR, Ill. (DTN) -- Leadership for Energy Automated Processing said on Friday, Feb. 2, that the LEAP Master Agreement for Purchasing and Selling Renewable Identification Numbers legal template is now available.

LEAP is a non-profit organization made up of oil and gas industry producers, biofuels producers, traders, exchange groups and other industry participants.

RINs are the credits utilized by refiners, blenders and importers to show compliance with the Renewable Fuels Standard annual renewable fuel obligations.

This template is available for voluntary use by market participants in order to document the purchase and sale of RINs.

The RIN agreement document can be downloaded free of charge from the LEAP website (http://www.energyleap.org/…), the group said.

Master agreements, like the LEAP RINs Master Agreement, are utilized by counterparties for several reasons, including, to: obtain agreement on legal, credit and operational terms; obtain transaction simplification; and facilitate the electronic matching of trades.

"Where one party and another party buy and sell RINs with each other regularly, it makes sense that they would want to obtain agreement on the general terms that govern their trades, like title transfer, buyer's remedies for invalid or deficient RINs, seller's remedies for buyer's failures to accept or pay, limitations of parties' liability, among other terms," LEAP said in a news release today.

Once a LEAP RINs Master Agreement is executed, transactions become simplified because individual trade confirmations only need to include the economic terms of a trade, LEAP said.

In the future, subject to development by industry partners, parties may be able to forego paper confirmations altogether by using an online matching platform to confirm their trades.

The LEAP RINs Master Agreement was prepared by a committee comprised of representatives from LEAP member companies and non-member participating companies. The committee believes the LEAP RINs Master Agreement represents an unbiased set of terms and conditions that provide legal and operational clarity for the rights and obligations of the buyer and seller of RINs.

LEAP said the template may require revision and further customization by market participants depending on their individual commercial and legal objectives for each RINs transaction, and said parties should consult their own legal counsel and other professional advisers when using the template to effect RINs transactions.

LEAP's mission is to promote efficient and reliable transaction processing within the energy trading industry.

Membership in LEAP is open to energy trading, service and association entities on a nondiscriminatory basis. All members must be legal entities, not natural persons.

(BM/AG)

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