The effort to allow year-round sales of E15 gasoline might have won approval earlier in the month in the U.S. House of Representatives, but the Senate could be another issue. The debate promises to be a good one.
Indicative of the split on the ethanol issue is how Oklahoma House members voted. As OK Energy Today reported earlier, they had a split vote. Reps. Frank Lucas and Stephanie Bice voted in support of the Nationwide Consumer and Fuel Retailer Choice Act of 2025. It was opposed by Reps. Josh Brecheen, Tom Cole and Kevin Hern.
The vote was 218-203, with 122 Republicans, 95 Democrats and 1 independent voting in favor, and 90 Republicans and 113 Democrats opposing the bill. House Republican leadership also split on the topic as Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) voted against the bill while House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) voted for the bill. The legislation moves to the U.S. Senate where supporters are urging swift action to finalize the policy.
The debate resumes in the Senate in the coming month when Congress returns from its Memorial day recess and the question is whether E15 can get the 60 votes needed to become law. Lawmakers from Iowa, Nebraska and other big-corn producing states support the year-round sales of the blend, contending it would give consumers a less expensive alternative to fill their gas tanks. It would also promote more corn sales for the production of ethanol.
But as the Kansas Reflector reports, there is “credible skepticism” about those claims and it promises to become a “congressional brawl with no predictable results.”
“I don’t know if it can get 60, to be honest with you,” Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from West Virginia, said in an interview.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune offered some hope, reported the Reflector.
“We’re looking at ways to move it,” he told reporters. “We have people here who represent states that also have refineries, and that’s a factor in this conversation.”
One group, Taxpayers for Common Sense, described the House approval this way, “Its passage in the House is the culmination of a months-long effort to circumvent the normal legislative process and taxpayers’ interests in order to expand failed federal ethanol policy. And the taxpayer costs will be high — $2.3 billion according to the Congressional Budget Office, plus numerous other expenses that will be passed onto consumers, motorists, and taxpayers at the federal and state levels.”
The Taxpayers organization called the year-round sales plan “problematic” and stated that E15 has a higher vapor pressure, which causes smog-forming emissions. Under current law, E15 generally cannot be sold during the summer—June 1 to September 15—without temporary EPA waivers due to long-standing Clean Air Act restrictions.
“The winding legislative path reflects the larger reality that Congress still cannot build consensus around expanding E15. And instead of accepting defeat, ethanol-boosters continued to hold major legislative packages hostage in their efforts to force year-round E15,” the group charged.
Taxpayers for Common Sense argued that if the House-passed bill were to be approved by the Senate and enacted, it would reduce the number of oil refiners that are required to meet biofuel blending mandates as compared to the existing law. It would also prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from shifting biofuel blending mandates from small oil refiners to large oil refiners, which increases their cost of doing business. In the past, some smaller refinery operators in Oklahoma were among those who challenged some of the blending requirements.
