U.S. to increase biofuel quotas in ’19

President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered oil companies to blend more renewable fuel into gasoline and diesel next year.

However, it could be the last increase for years to come, as the government starts to make sweeping changes to the U.S. biofuel mandate, analysts said.

With the final 2019 quotas released Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency is kicking off a head-totoe overhaul of the Renewable Fuel Standard and setting off a fresh battle between the oil industry and agricultural interests over U.S. gasoline market share that will play out against an increasingly political backdrop.

Refiners and some environmentalists will be pressuring the EPA to dial back the 13-year-old biofuel mandate next year, even as Trump courts voters in the top cornand ethanol-producing state of Iowa.

The EPA on Friday said it’s requiring refiners to blend 19.92 billion gallons of biofuel next year, a 3.3 percent increase over the current requirements and largely in line with quotas the agency proposed in June. Some 15 billion gallons of the total can come from conventional sources such as corn-based ethanol. At least 4.92 billion gallons must be be fulfilled by advanced biofuel, including 418 million gallons of cellulosic renewable fuel, such as ethanol made from switchgrass.

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