US EPA Grants More Waivers from Biofuel Quotas

November 08, 2025

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by Cole Martin (Argus Media) President Donald Trump's administration today (November 7, 2025) granted small refiners even more exemptions from federal biofuel blend mandates, raising the stakes of a debate about whether larger oil companies should shoulder more of the burden.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) granted two full exemptions from the program's annual blend requirements, halved obligations in response to 12 petitions, and denied two others. The agency requires oil refiners and importers to annually blend biofuels or buy credits from those who do, though small facilities that process 75,000 b/d or less can request program waivers that can save them tens of millions of dollars.

The agency used the same methodology as its sweeping August decision, which responded to a historic backlog of petitions and granted most refiners some relief from years of mandates. New petitions poured in afterwards, including from refiners that had not requested waivers in years. And more decisions could come soon, with EPA committing Friday to "address new petitions as quickly as possible" and to try to meet a legal requirement to decide requests within 90 days.

Farm and biofuel groups fear that widespread waivers curb demand for their products and have lobbied the Trump administration to follow through on a plan to make oil companies without exemptions blend more biofuels in future years to offset past exemptions for their smaller rivals. Particularly for higher-cost products like renewable diesel and biogas, any dip in demand can prompt biorefineries to slash output.

The debate has intensified in recent weeks after a refiner granted generous exemptions in August announced plans to convert a renewable diesel unit back to crude.

"The impact on biofuel and agriculture markets will be devastating" without compensating for these exemptions in future biofuel quotas, said Geoff Cooper, president of the ethanol lobby Renewable Fuels Association.

EPA already planned on estimating future exemptions from 2026-2027 requirements when finalizing biofuel mandates those years. But the agency has added more work to its plate with a subsequent plan to force large oil refiners to compensate for either all or half of the biofuel volumes lost to actual and expected exemptions from 2023-2025 requirements. The impact of older exemptions is less significant since the credits are expired.

The challenge for EPA is that small refiners can submit new or revised petitions at any time, including for years-old mandates. That makes it hard for EPA to accurately forecast future exemptions, and biofuel groups have feared that the agency could muddle the effects of its "reallocation" plan by underestimating volumes ultimately lost to program waivers.

Indeed, EPA with its Friday decisions has already waived more requirements than it predicted earlier this year. The agency last forecast that exemptions from 2023 and 2024 mandates would amount to around 1.4bn Renewable Identification Number credits (RINs) of lost demand — but now, the waivers have already reduced obligations those years by 1.92bn RINs, according to program data. If EPA sticks to its plans, that means large refiners will have to blend an even greater share in future years than expected. But if the Trump administration waters down its reallocation idea, biofuel demand could sink more than previously forecast too.

There is also the risk that EPA underestimates exemptions for the 2025 compliance year. EPA last forecast that exemptions from those requirements will amount to 780mn RINs of lost demand but has not yet decided any of the 12 pending petitions for that year. Many more requests are likely.

Small refiners add to their winnings

The August exemptions were a windfall for some oil companies. HF Sinclair, which owns multiple small refineries, last week reported $115mn from lower compliance costs as well as a $56mn indirect benefit from "commercial optimization" of its RIN credit position.

And HF Sinclair won more Friday, winning full waivers from 2023 and 2024 biofuel mandates for the "east" section of a larger 125,000 b/d complex in Tulsa, Oklahoma that before September had not previously requested relief in at least three years. The company also won partial relief for two other units from 2021 mandates.

Phillips 66 won four years of partial relief for its 66,000 b/d Montana facility, as did Big West Oil for its 35,000 b/d Utah plant. Silver Eagle won exemptions from 2023 blend mandates for two smaller units it owns in Wyoming and Utah. The only Friday denials were for Chevron's 45,000 b/d Utah refinery, which applied for the first time in years just last month.

But the increasingly generous relief for small refiners is likely to provoke further backlash from larger oil companies, which argue that making them blend more biofuels is anticompetitive and illegal.

EPA is months behind schedule on setting biofuel mandates for 2026 and 2027 and has a deadline Friday to tell a court more about how its reallocation plan affects its timeline. Biofuel groups have asked the court to force the agency to finalize program updates by year-end. READ MORE

Related articles

US EPA approves 14 small refinery biofuel waivers (Reuters)
EPA grants full/partial approvals for 14 additional SRE petitions, denies 2 petitions (Ethanol Producer Magazine)
HF Sinclair, Phillips 66 win EPA biofuel-blending exemptions (Bloomberg)
EPA grants small refinery exemptions, spurring ethanol outcry (Agri-Pulse)
EPA Grants RFS Small-Refinery Exemptions -- EPA Grants 14 Small-Refinery Exemptions From RFS, Biofuel Industry Group Warns of Market Pressure (DTN Progressive Farmer)
Renewable fuels industry concerned as EPA approves wave of refinery waivers (Brownfield Ag News; includes AUDIO)
Refiners Split Over RFS Waivers Plan Amid Looming Year-End Rule Target (Inside EPA)
Ethanol Industry Concerns About Oil Refinery Waivers (KIWA Radio)

Excerpt form Reuters: Under Friday's decision, two applications were granted 100% exemptions, and 12 were granted 50% exemptions.

The Renewable Fuels Association, a biofuel industry trade group, criticized the waivers as harmful to farmers.

"Today, EPA created even more uncertainty and confusion in the renewable fuel and agriculture markets, which are already under immense pressure from record corn and soybean harvests this fall," RFA President and CEO Geoff Cooper said.

The agency now has 15 pending applications, including 12 for the 2025 compliance year and three for previous years. READ MORE

Excerpt from Ethanol Producer Magazine: For an SRE petition to be approved, the refiner must demonstrate “disproportionate economic hardship” in satisfying its RVO requirements. As part of the SRE application process, the U.S. Department of Energy is tasked with analyzing and scoring SRE petitions. The EPA, however, makes the final determination to approve or deny each petition.

According to information released by the EPA, the agency has fully approved one SRE petition for RFS compliance year 2023 and one for RFS compliance year 2024. The 50% partial approvals include four for compliance year 2021, two for compliance year 2022, four for compliance year 2023, and two for compliance year 2024. The two denials include one each for compliance year 2023 and 2024.

On a combined basis, the approvals have reduced the total RVO for all four years by 740 million renewable identification numbers (RINs). This includes 150 million RINs for 2021, 70 million RINs for 2022, 250 million RINs for 2023 and 260 million RINs for 2024.

The EPA also updated its online SRE data dashboard, showing one new SRE petition has been filed since mid-October. That petition, filed by Kern Oil & Refining Co., seeks a waiver of the 2025 RVOs for its facility in Bakersfield, California.

There are now 15 SRE petitions pending, including two filed for RFS compliance year 2023, one for RFS compliance year 2024 and 12 for RFS compliance year 2025.

The Nov. 7 action on 16 SRE petitions follows the EPA’s Aug. 22 decisions on 175 SRE petitions filed by 38 small refineries for compliance years 2016-2024. In that action, the EPA granted full exemptions to 63 petitions, granted partial (50%) exemptions to 77 petitions, denied 28 petitions and determined 7 petitions to be ineligible.

In documentation released Nov. 7, the EPA issued a correction to its Aug. 22 action, noting it “erroneously provided a partial exemption for the 2020 compliance year to a small refinery that should have been provided a full exemption.” The agency attributed the mistake to a clerical error made by DOE in transcribing the metric from the scoring rationale to the DOE matrix. To correct the error, the EPA has changed the partial approval for that SRE application to a full approval.

As part of its Nov. 7 announcement, the EPA said it is reaffirming the agency’s policy of returning RINs previously retired for compliance when a small refinery receives an exemption for a prior compliance year. While no actual RINs will be returned today, EPA said will follow standard agency policy and instruct those impacted to contact the EPA Fuels Program Helpdesk to initiate the RINs return process.

Moving forward, the EPA said it is committed to ruling on SRE applications within the statutory 90-day review period.

The agency also briefly addressed the supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking (SNPRM) it issued in September that addresses how the agency plans to reallocate waived SRE volumes moving forward. The comment period on that SNRPM closed Oct. 31. In its Nov. 7 announcement, the EPA said it “is reviewing comments on the supplemental proposed rule as the agency continues to work on final regulations for the “Set 2” rule. As stated in the SNPRM, EPA intends to update the agency’s projections of exempted gasoline and diesel volumes in the final rule based on any additional SREs issued after the proposal, including the petition decisions in this action.”

The Renewable Fuels Association criticized the EPA’s new SRE approvals. “Today, EPA created even more uncertainty and confusion in the renewable fuel and agriculture markets, which are already under immense pressure from record corn and soybean harvests this fall,” said Geoff Cooper, president and CEO of the RFA. “EPA added another 14 small refinery exemptions to the already-massive pile today, based on the agency’s questionable new approach to determining whether those refiners experienced ‘disproportionate economic hardship.’ We continue to dispute the notion that SREs are warranted at all, as EPA’s own analysis shows that all refiners—large and small—face a proportional RFS compliance obligation and pass their RIN costs through to buyers of their refined products. The silver lining here is that EPA is returning expired RINs to the six refineries who were granted exemptions from their 2021 and 2022 RFS obligations. However, more than 500 million valid RINs will be issued to eight refineries who were gifted exemptions from their 2023 and 2024 obligations, meaning there are now more than 2.5 billion RINs associated with 2023-2025 SREs that are likely to be dropped back onto the market in the months ahead. If EPA fails to reallocate those volumes when it finalizes the 2026 and 2027 RVOs, the impact on biofuel and agriculture markets will be devastating. Today’s decision further underscores the crucial need for EPA to finalize 2026-2027 RVOs that fully reallocate any and all SREs granted, or expected to be granted, for the 2023-2027 compliance years.”

The EPA in late 2022 began publishing basic data on the each SRE petition filed with the agency, including company name, location and compliance year. A full copy of that data is available below. READ MORE

Excerpt from Brownfield Ag News: The Renewable Fuels Association is alarmed by the growing number of small refinery exemptions being processed by the EPA.

CEO Geoff Cooper tells Brownfield the agency has granted a massive amount of waivers the past two months.

“So we’re now around 160 exemptions dating all the way back to 2016, and this is cause for concern for the industry because EPA is essentially going to be returning RIN credits to some of these refineries for some of these exemptions.”

He says many of those credits will probably be used to meet obligations in lieu of refineries purchasing and blending physical volumes of renewable fuels.

“I guess the only thing that would really alleviate that concern would be if EPA fully reallocates these exempted volumes and adds them back to the 2026 and 2027 RVO’s. And we don’t know if EPA is going to do that.”

The EPA says the latest decision on SRE’s is part of the Trump administration’s commitment to get the Renewable Fuel Standard back on track with an approach that recognizes some small refineries are impacted more significantly than others. READ MORE; includes AUDIO

Excerpt from Inside EPA: Refiners are deeply split over EPA’s proposal to partially or fully “reallocate” biofuel blending volumes waived for small refineries under the renewable fuel standard (RFS), with large oil companies seeking reduced issuance of such waivers even as both groups oppose the planned reallocation. The debate -- which also includes claims from the biofuels sector that only full reallocation of the waived volumes would be a lawful option for EPA -- comes amid a looming year-end target to finalize the plan... READ MORE