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The Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) is sharply criticizing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's decision to grant 29 full or partial small refinery exemptions, arguing that several of the refiners benefiting from the waivers do not actually need them.
RFA President and CEO Geoff Cooper pushed back against the rationale behind the exemptions, saying the trade group sees no valid justification for releasing profitable refiners from their blending obligations. 'We think that is nonsense. There is no rationale. There's no justification for giving those exemptions to those refiners when we all know that the refining sector today is making record profit margins. They're making more money than they ever have in history, so to argue to EPA that they somehow are experiencing hardship and need to be let out of their ethanol and biodiesel blending obligations just doesn't pass the sniff test,' Cooper said.
According to the EPA, the 29 full or partial exemptions remove approximately 1.76 billion Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) from 2025 compliance obligations — well above the 990 million credits the industry had initially expected. Despite the volume of waived obligations, the agency has pledged to add the difference back into future blending requirements, a move that could help safeguard demand for biodiesel and soybean oil.
The decision comes at a time when the U.S. refining sector is reporting historic profit margins, intensifying the political and economic debate over how the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) should be administered and whether small refinery hardship petitions are being used to circumvent blending mandates.
Source: RFD-TV