Fischer says year-round E15 stays in the Senate farm bill as corn-state senators hold the line
Year-round nationwide E15 is still in the Senate farm bill, and Nebraska's Deb Fischer told WJAG she expects it to survive when Congress comes back after the midterms. The Agriculture Committee moved the bill before recess with the E15 provision attached. Fischer said a mix of refinery-state and corn-state senators is behind it, and that the president wants it done. For anyone running pumps, that would end the annual summer fight over Reid vapor pressure waivers and let E15 flow all twelve months without a yearly reprieve from EPA or the courts.
For US retailers, this is the week's biggest item. E15 sells at a discount to E10 at the pump, and year-round certainty is what gets more jobbers to put money into the blender tanks and registrations to carry it. The catch is the bill has to pass. Committee passage is not law, and a farm bill can stall on a hundred things that have nothing to do with ethanol.
Continental's biodiesel
Continental Refining Company in Somerset, Kentucky put out an operations update and said it is expanding biodiesel production. Small refiner, small volume, but it is one more domestic gallon of biomass-based diesel feeding the RFS and the blenders credit math. Worth a note if you haul in that corner of the market.
Diesel eating the Walmart refund
Diesel prices are high enough that Deutsche Bank figures Walmart's $2.9 billion tariff refund gets wiped out by freight costs by the end of 2027. When the biggest shipper in the country is watching fuel eat a windfall that size, smaller haulers are feeling the same pull. Pump gasoline is not moving much either, with crude staying high and retail prices stuck.
The grain feedstock fight
India set sugar diversion for ethanol to zero for its 2026-27 supply year and put out a tender for about 1,100 crore litres. That moves its distillers onto maize and surplus rice instead of sugarcane. The All India Distillers' Association is fighting a cut in the maize ethanol incentive from 5.79 to 2.79 rupees a litre. It is a domestic Indian policy, but it points more grain-based ethanol demand at the global corn balance, the same feedstock US plants run on. Keep half an eye on it if you trade corn-driven RIN economics.
What to watch
Whether the farm bill actually reaches the Senate floor after the midterms, and whether the E15 language survives the amendment process intact. On diesel, watch whether freight costs keep climbing into 2027 the way Deutsche Bank is modeling, because that is what decides how much of the squeeze lands on your lanes.