Controversies abound related to the big farm bill making its way through congress this week. Much of the reporting in recent days has centered on a bipartisan effort in the House of Representatives to repeal the liability shield for producers of pesticides. But another, energy-related controversy has risen in recent days, this one centered on an attempt to mandate year-round sales of E15 fuels which has created a divide in the nation’s refining industry.
Amending The Farm Bill To Force E15 Sales Year-Round
The amendment (Amendment 289) offered by Minnesota Republican Michelle Fischbach, has the support of a broad coalition including ethanol refiners, big farm interests like John Deere and the National Farmer’s Union, along with the American Petroleum Institute (API) whose membership includes most of the big refining companies. It’s a seemingly odd set of bedfellows to be coordinating efforts on a farm bill until you understand this bill has everything to do with fuel and refining.
“At a moment when households are feeling the sharp pressure of energy prices, this amendment is critical to promoting affordability, providing clarity for energy producers and fuel retailers, and strengthening America’s farmers,” API Vice President of Downstream Policy Will Hupman wrote on April 23. “It brings long-overdue certainty and predictability to fuel markets and expands fuel choice for American consumers.”
The proposed amendment plays off the move in March by the EPA to allow gas stations to sell high-ethanol fuel blends from May 1 through May 20 in parts of the country where it is not normally allowed during summer months. The waiver was invoked in hopes of slowing the rise of prices at the pump amid the continuing Iran Conflict, since E15 tends to sell for a slightly lower price than ordinary gasoline blends. Importantly, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin points out that the 20-day waiver is the maximum term allowed under the governing statute.
Most gasolines contain up to 10% of ethanol under the federal Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS), enacted in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 during the George W. Bush administration. Given that E15 contains up to 15% of ethanol, Fischbach and some other supporters of the amendment have pushed it as an easy way to give farmers a money infusion without raising the cost of the farm bill.
Billions In Costs Added To The Farm Bill
But the Congressional Budget Office disagrees, telling Politico on Tuesday that the provision would increase the bill’s score by “single digit billions” of dollars over a 10-year period. Including the language as currently drafted would put an end to House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson’s (R-Pa.) goal of moving a bill that is revenue-neutral absent some offsetting revenue.
“This is billions of dollars that won’t be paid for that will be added to the farm bill, which is extraordinary to me,” Jim McGovern (Mass.), top Democrat on the House Rules Committee said in response to the news from CBO. It’s a level of scoring damage that would normally be the death knell for any amendment, but opponents remain concerned this one could live on due to the array of heavy hitting lobbying interests lined up in support.
Among those opponents are the Small Refineries of America (SRA), a coalition representing that segment of the U.S. refining industry. In an April 23 letter to House Rules Committee Chairwoman Virginia Fox and Ranking Member Jim McGovern, SRA says Amendment 289 would “jeopardize our nation’s vitally important small refineries, the workers and communities that depend on them, and the nation’s energy security—while ultimately increasing costs for consumers.” SRA adds that the amendment “advances policies that would take away existing statutory protections for small refineries and put them at risk of closure—at a time when preserving domestic refining capacity is critical to stabilizing fuel prices.”
Writing at the National Interest, Nick Loris, executive vice president of Policy at C3 Solutions reinforces the small refiners’ position, noting that compliance with the RFS can be one of the most significant costs for those companies. “According to an August 2025 analysis by Turner, Mason, & Company,” he writes, “the mandate could cost refiners nearly $70 billion annually, nearly double what it cost refiners in 2023. Whether small or large, refiners must absorb the economic hit or pass costs onto consumers.”
Loris further points out that granting these smaller refiners expanded exemptions from RFS mandates would also help ease prices at the pump. It’s a strong point, one that would not be limited to the 20-day time frame which applies to the E15 waiver.
Extending E15 In The Farm Bill Would Be A ‘Bipartisan Failure’
Travis Fischer, Director of Energy and Environmental Policy Studies for the libertarian CATO Institute, takes the argument further, advocating that congress ought to be having an honest debate about whether to repeal the RFS entirely instead of using it to pump more money to farmers by removing prime farmland from the food system to manufacture unneeded fuel. He and CATO believe the RFS through its long existence and the constantly rising mandates for ethanol volumes invoked under it have farmers “hooked on an expensive habit of federal support.”
“The persistence of the RFS is a bipartisan failure,” Fischer added in an email on Tuesday. “Ethanol subsidies in particular make no sense because we have an abundance of domestic hydrocarbon fuels, and the environmental justifications used to promote the use of ethanol blends over pure gasoline are weak at best. But the real tragedy is that the politics of RFS exemptions have divided the interests of big and small refiners, who should be united in the effort to repeal this awful policy.”
But any repeal is unlikely to happen given the complex politics surrounding ethanol and the sometimes emotional attachment some key members of the House and Senate – perhaps most notably, Iowa Senator Charles Grassley – have to the mandates which they believe benefit farmers in their home state and districts.
It all serves to highlight the longstanding reality that the U.S. oil and gas industry, due to its thousands of participants of all shapes and sizes, is seldom fully unified on matters of public policy. Individual companies are much like nation states which prioritize their own security interests above more global considerations. Thus, we see the divide on this issue between the big refiners who are also in the retail business and the small independent refiners spilling over into the farm bill, thanks to the societal decision to remove prime farmland from the food system to produce fuel.
