The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced earlier this week new quotas for renewable fuels blended into gasoline in 2016, higher than expected, Bloomberg reported.

President Barack Obama’s administration has ordered refiners to blend more than 10 % of corn-based ethanol into gasoline, a threshold that oil companies found dangerous for engines and catalytic converters, PennEnergy reported.

Biofuel blending requirements aim at decreasing pollution and foreign oil dependency.

The American Petroleum Institute’s (API) request to cap the total ethanol mandate at 9.7 percent of gasoline demand, which would provide a buffer below the 10 percent blend accepted in all cars and trucks to accommodate sales of ethanol-free gasoline, suggest unrealistic sales estimates, API’s President, Jack Gerard, told Bloomberg.

However, according to Reuters‘ sources, the announced quotas remain well short of a target set by Congress in 2007.