It never ceases to amaze me how chaotic this industry can be.
Start with a trade war layered on top of a four-plus-year real war. Add a second war, declining yield prospects and—shocker—another round of biofuel policy headlines.
Suddenly, you are living on Zyn and drinking your dinner.
Today, I scrapped the HOT TAKE the No Bull team has been working on for the past few days in favor of a shorter update addressing the two biggest problems at hand: biofuel policy and war in the Black Sea.
Let’s start with policy—and a quote I use regularly because I have never heard it summed up better:
“If you’re in agriculture, you’re in the government policy business. You’re not in the crop production business. You’re not in the crushing business. You’re really in the government policy business today.”
Soybeans Have an Oil Problem. Oil Has an SRE Problem.
Policy has been firmly on soybean oil’s side up until this point in 2026.
But the past week has served as a harsh reminder that policy-driven demand always carries pen-stroke risk—because demand created by policy remains at the mercy of whatever policymakers do next.
This week’s SRE headlines are the latest example.
Quick refresher
Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) are the credits EPA uses to track compliance with the Renewable Fuel Standard. Refiners obtain them by blending renewable fuel or buying them in the market; once used for compliance, they are retired and cannot be reused.
Small Refinery Exemptions (SREs) relieve qualifying refineries of some or all of that obligation, reducing the number of RINs they must retire.
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