Soybean leaders say nearly doubling RFS exemptions would be detrimental

News Soybean leaders say nearly doubling RFS exemptions would be detrimental The American Soybean Association says farmers could lose about $1 billion if EPA approves small refinery exemption petitions being proposed. “This is just kind of a handout to oil companies and a handout to the small refineries.” Vice President Dave Walton, a soybean farmer from Iowa, tells Brownfield it’s frustrating to see promises by the Trump administration to increase biofuel volumes to historic levels eroded overnight. “A small refinery can claim that they’ve got an economic hardship and ask for an exemption from blending the fuel or buying the RINs to stay in compliance,” he explains. “EPA has started making some rumblings that may be what they do at a record pace.” He says eliminating about 500 million gallons of biomass-based diesel demand cuts soybean profits by about 22 cents per bushel. “We could be impacting 20 percent of the fuel volume produced in the nation this year,” he says. “I can’t think of a time when we’ve had that big of an impact in the marketplace.” Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley tells Brownfield both farmers and biofuel producers need certainty. “We should not exceed the 900 million that was announced a year ago, I think, and to go up well over twice that amount is catastrophic to biofuels generally,” he says. ASA is urging the administration to maintain exemptions no greater than what the EPA estimated using historically backed market data when it published the current biofuel blending rule. Add Comment