November 7, 2025
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its decisions on 16 petitions from small refineries seeking exemptions from the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).
The petitions were submitted by eight refineries requesting exemptions from their RFS obligations for compliance years 2021 through 2024.
EPA is granting full (100 percent) exemptions for two petitions, partial (50 percent) exemptions for 12 petitions, and denying two petitions. These decisions exempted another 740 million RINs on top of the 3 billion RINs already exempted for these compliance years by EPA in August.
The Agency also updated its RFS Small Refinery Exemptions (SRE) webpage to reflect these decisions.
Specifically in these decisions, EPA exempted 150 million RINs for compliance year 2021, 70 million RINs for 2022, 250 million RINs for 2023, and 280 million RINs for 2024.
EPA has not made determinations on the 12 pending 2025 SRE petitions, 1 pending decision for 2024 and 2 pending decisions for 2023. By law, the Agency must decide on each petition within 90 days of receipt. Additionally, any refinery seeking an exemption for its 2025 RFS obligations was required to submit its petition to EPA by November 1, 2025.
Lastly, EPA is still determining on whether to reallocate any of the exempted volumes from 2023-2025. Comments on the reallocation proposal were due Oct. 31.
RIN markets had little reaction to the decision.