$6.28 Diesel and a Stalled Senate Bill: Biofuel CEOs Push E15 as the Pump Fix

Regular gasoline averaged $4.28 per gallon nationally as the four trade-group CEOs wrote their appeal, with diesel at $6.28 — up from $3.02 and $3.62 a year earlier. The opinion piece, signed by National Corn Growers Association CEO Neil Caskey, Renewable Fuels Association President and CEO Geoff Cooper, Growth Energy CEO Emily Skor and National Sorghum Producers CEO Tim Lust, argues that biofuels are the fastest available lever to push those prices down.

The authors frame the price board outside service stations as the decisive political message of the election cycle. Blame-shifting, they write, does nothing to solve the problem; expanding homegrown fuel supply does.

What do the numbers show?

Ethanol already adds more than 14 billion gallons of lower-cost fuel to the U.S. gasoline supply each year, according to the piece, equal to nearly 11% of total gasoline consumption. Those volumes, the CEOs argue, have a real and measurable effect on pump prices — though the piece cites no independent price-impact study to size that effect.

The sharpest specific claim is a retail comparison: in recent weeks, an Illinois station sold E15 at $3.19 per gallon while standard E10 cost $4.79 at the same location — a $1.60 gap. The CEOs say E15 typically saves drivers 20 to 30 cents per gallon, and often more. That Illinois figure is a single-store snapshot, not a market average, and the piece does not say how representative it is.

Why can't drivers buy E15 now?

Access remains limited by what the authors call antiquated regulations that only Congress can change. Those rules block most gas stations from selling E15 during the summer driving season.

Earlier this year the House passed bipartisan legislation to allow year-round E15 sales. The Senate has not acted, the CEOs note, despite what they describe as repeated calls from President Trump for Congress to do so.

What does this mean for farm margins?

Farmers are harvesting now — the most fuel-intensive stretch of the growing season — and the authors warn that higher diesel costs could erase the thin margins of farm operations, much as they squeeze other small businesses. No specific per-acre cost figure is offered to quantify the hit.

The piece also assumes prices will stay high, citing global conflicts that disrupt critical supply-chain infrastructure. That is a forecast, not a harvested result, and it carries the usual uncertainty of any forward-looking read.

Who is asking, and for what?

The four CEOs direct their appeal to lawmakers who have not embraced biofuel expansion: your constituents want relief at the pump, they write, and American biofuel producers can provide it. They credit candidates who have made the issue a marquee legislative priority, without naming them.

Every promise here rests on numbers supplied by the industries that would benefit from the policy; readers should weigh the 20-to-30-cent savings claim and the Illinois example against broader retail data before treating them as typical. What is not in dispute is the legislative fact: the House bill exists, and the Senate has not moved it with the election, as the authors note, only days away.

If the Senate acts after the vote, the first test will be whether E15 shows up at more pumps next summer at the discounts the CEOs promise.