Notice of November 2025 Decisions on Petitions for Small Refinery Exemptions Under the Renewable Fuel Standard Program

<NOTICE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <DEPDOC>[FRL-13048-01-OAR]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Notice of November 2025 Decisions on Petitions for Small Refinery Exemptions Under the Renewable Fuel Standard Program</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Decision on petitions. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is providing notification of its final action entitled November 2025 Decision on Petitions for RFS Small Refinery Exemptions (“November 2025 SRE Decisions Action”) in which EPA issued decisions on 16 small refinery exemption (SRE) petitions under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program. EPA is providing this notification for public awareness of, and the basis for, EPA's decision announced on November 7, 2025. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> November 20, 2025. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Campbell Martin, Office of Transportation and Air Quality, Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20004; telephone number: (202) 564-5209; email address: <E T="03">SRE-Petitions@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background and Final Action</HD> The Clean Air Act (CAA) provides that a small refinery  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> may at any time petition EPA for an extension of the exemption from the obligations of the RFS program for the reason of disproportionate economic hardship (DEH). <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> In evaluating such petitions, the EPA Administrator, in consultation with the Secretary of Energy, will consider the findings of a Department of Energy (DOE) study and other economic factors. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  The CAA defines a small refinery as “a refinery for which the average aggregate daily crude oil throughput for a calendar year . . . does not exceed 75,000 barrels.” CAA section 211( <E T="03">o</E> )(1)(K). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  CAA section 211(o)(9)(B)(i). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  CAA section 211(o)(9)(B)(ii). </FTNT> In the November 2025 SRE Decisions Action, <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> EPA is acting on 16 individual SRE petitions from 8 refineries seeking an exemption from their RFS obligations for the 2021-2024 compliance years. In consultation with DOE, EPA reviewed all the information submitted by each individual refinery in support of its petition. After careful consideration of all statutory factors and the information submitted by the refineries, EPA is granting full (100 percent) exemptions to 2 petitions, granting partial (50 percent) exemptions to 12 petitions, and denying 2 petitions. <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  EPA, “November 2025 Decision on Petitions for RFS Small Refinery Exemptions,” EPA-420-R-25-013, November 2025. </FTNT> The November 2025 SRE Decisions Action articulates EPA's interpretation of section 211(o)(9) of the CAA and EPA's authority with respect to SRE petitions. As required by CAA section 211(o)(9), EPA's final actions on the pending SRE petitions are based on the legal and factual analysis presented herein, after consulting with DOE, and considering the DOE Small Refinery Study and “other economic factors.” The November 2025 SRE Decisions Action also explains how EPA will implement SRE decisions when an exemption is granted. In addition, the November 2025 SRE Decisions Action provides a correction to an error in one of the SRE decisions issued in the August 2025 SRE Decisions Action. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  EPA, “August 2025 Decision on Petitions for RFS Small Refinery Exemptions,” EPA-420-R-25-010, August 2025. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Judicial Review</HD> Section 307(b)(1) of the CAA governs judicial review of final actions by EPA. This section generally provides that petitions for judicial review of final actions that are nationally applicable must be filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and petitions for judicial review of actions that are locally or regionally applicable must be filed in the appropriate regional circuit. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> However, petitions for judicial review of a final action that is locally or regionally applicable must be filed in the D.C. Circuit when “such action is based on a determination of nationwide scope or effect and if in taking such action the Administrator finds and publishes that such action is based on such a determination.”  <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  CAA section 307(b)(1). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> As the Supreme Court recently articulated in <E T="03">Calumet,</E> the first step in determining the appropriate venue for judicial review of an EPA final action is to ascertain whether the action at issue is nationally applicable or locally or regionally applicable. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> If the action is nationally applicable, judicial review belongs in the D.C. Circuit. If the action is locally or regionally applicable, then the second step is to determine whether EPA has appropriately invoked the “nationwide scope or effect” exception to “override the default rule” that judicial review of a locally or regionally applicable action belongs in the appropriate regional circuit. <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> The exception applies, and judicial review of EPA's action belongs in the D.C. Circuit, if EPA invokes the exception for a final action that is “based on a determination of nationwide scope or effect” and accompanied by an EPA finding of this basis. <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> A determination is “the justification [EPA] gives for it[s] action, which can be found in its explanation of its action.”  <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> A determination has a nationwide scope when it applies throughout the country as a legal matter, and it has a nationwide effect when it applies throughout the country as a practical matter. <SU>12</SU> <FTREF/> Finally, an action is “based on” a determination of nationwide scope or effect when the determination “lie[s] at the core of the agency action,” so as to form the most important part of the agency's reasoning. <SU>13</SU> <FTREF/> Put another way, an EPA action is based on a determination of nationwide scope or effect “only if a justification of nationwide breadth is the primary explanation for and driver of EPA's action.”  <SU>14</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">Calumet,</E> 145 S. Ct. at 1746. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> at 1746. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> at 1749-50. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>11</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> at 1750 (internal quotations omitted). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>12</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>13</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> at 1751. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>14</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> In the November 2025 SRE Decisions Action, EPA is adjudicating SRE petitions pursuant to the authority granted to the Agency by CAA section 211(o)(9)(B). Each adjudication is a separate “action” for the purposes of determining venue under CAA section 307(b)(1), and because each adjudication only applies to a single refinery, each action is locally or regionally applicable. <SU>15</SU> <FTREF/> However, EPA's adjudication of the relevant petitions is based on several determinations of nationwide scope or effect that formed the core basis for the Agency's decision. <FTNT> <SU>15</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> at 1748. </FTNT> First, these adjudications are based on EPA's determination that CAA section 211(o)(9) provides EPA with the authority to find that a small refinery would experience partial DEH if required to comply with its RFS obligations and to extend a partial exemption. As detailed in Section III.H, CAA section 211(o)(9)(B) grants EPA authority to temporarily extend the exemption from RFS obligations to a small refinery that demonstrates “disproportionate economic hardship,” but the statute does not define that phrase or its components, suggesting Congress left it to the Agency's discretion to “fill up the details” when determining how to implement this provision. <SU>16</SU> <FTREF/> EPA interprets CAA section 211(o)(9)(B), based on the plain language, structure, and objective of the statute, to provide the Agency with the authority to find that a small refinery would experience partial DEH and to extend a partial exemption. This determination has nationwide scope because it is an interpretation of a federal statute and CAA section 211(o)(9)(B)(i) by its terms applies nationwide. <SU>17</SU> <FTREF/> Additionally, this determination has nationwide effect because it applies generically to all refineries nationwide, regardless of their geographic location. <SU>18</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>16</SU>   <E T="03">Loper Bright Enters.</E> v. <E T="03">Raimondo,</E> 603 U.S. 369, 394-95. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>17</SU>   <E T="03">Calumet,</E> 145 S. Ct. at 1752. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>18</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> Second, these adjudications are based on EPA's determination that the DOE matrix is a reasonable proxy for DEH, and EPA will defer to DOE's findings unless EPA's consideration of other economic factors compels a different result. As detailed in Section III.E, CAA section 211(o)(9)(B) permits a small refinery to petition for an extension of the exemption from its RFS obligations for the reason of DEH. The statute directs EPA to “consider the findings of the [2011 DOE study] and other economic factors” in evaluating a petition but provides no further instruction as to how to effectuate these obligations. <SU>19</SU> <FTREF/> As the author of the study and through its work assessing SRE petitions in conjuncti ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 22k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━