EPA reports no new SRE petitions, 40 remain pending
EPA left 40 small refinery exemption petitions unresolved, with 34 tied to 2025 compliance and the rest split across 2023 and 2024.
EPA on June 18 said no new small refinery exemption petitions were filed, leaving 40 cases pending across 2023, 2024 and 2025 compliance years. The latest monthly update kept the SRE backlog in place as refiners and biofuel sellers continue to watch how unresolved exemptions will feed into Renewable Fuel Standard compliance and RIN demand.
The agency said the pending petitions included two for compliance year 2023, four for 2024 and 34 for 2025. EPA also said it took no action in the latest update to approve or deny any petitions. Under the RFS SRE program, small refineries may petition annually for an exemption from their renewable fuel obligations if they show disproportionate economic hardship, and EPA may extend an exemption for two years under the Clean Air Act and its implementing rules.
The 40-case queue follows a much larger EPA cleanup last year. In August 2025, the agency acted on 175 SRE petitions from 38 small refineries covering compliance years 2016 through 2024, granting 63 full exemptions, 77 partial exemptions, denying 28 petitions and finding seven ineligible. EPA then issued additional decisions in November 2025 on 16 petitions, but the June 18 update showed the agency still had not cleared the remaining cases.
That unresolved docket matters because EPA’s March 27 final Renewable Fuel Standard rule for 2026 and 2027 built in 70% reallocation of SRE volumes granted for 2023 through 2025. With 40 petitions still open, the market is left to price the possibility of more exemptions, more reallocation and more compliance volume shifting between obligated refiners and renewable fuel producers.
The June 18 EPA data release also showed that D4, D5 and D6 RIN prices were higher in May 2026 than a year earlier, while D3 RIN prices were slightly lower. That split underscores how exemption decisions continue to shape category-by-category RIN expectations even as EPA leaves the pending SRE inventory unchanged for another month.
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