B.C.’s energy minister announced Thursday the province will be closing a regulatory loophole in an effort to stop subsidized U.S. diesel from flooding into B.C., a move that Prince George-based oil refinery Tidewater Renewables has been calling for as it risks going out of business.

Starting Jan. 1, 2026, the province’s five per cent renewable fuel standard for gas and diesel will be required to be met with Canadian-made fuel.

The province is also boosting the percentage of diesel that must be renewable from four per cent to eight per cent as of April 1.

“For too long, B.C. biofuel producers have operated in a market where their American counterparts benefited from subsidies that gave them a considerable competitive advantage. As many of you will note, these subsidies dramatically increased with the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States,” Dix told reporters at the legislature.

The Inflation Reduction Act was brought in by former U.S. President Joe Biden in 2022 and supports biofuel producers under the Clean Fuel Production Credit. This has resulted in a major uptick in the country’s production of biodiesel and in its exports to Canada, where it also benefits from the low fuel standard that requires gas and diesel in B.C. to include a certain amount of renewable fuel.

Founded in 2021 after its parent company, Tidewater Midstream, bought a refinery from Husky Energy in Prince George, Tidewater Renewables has made a business out of producing renewable diesel at its refinery in Prince George.

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It can produce up to 3,000 barrels of the energy source per day at the plant out of used cooking oils, beef tallow and canola oil. The company then uses the fuel to sell emission credits under the low-fuel standards program.

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However, Tidewater Renewables recently announced that it hadn’t been able to sell any credits in the second quarter of this year and could shut down as soon as March if the outlook for its business didn’t change.

Tidewater Midstream chief financial officer Ian Quartly welcomed the province’s efforts to address the issue, but warned it won’t fully stop the flow of U.S. biodiesel.

“A lot of U.S. renewables will still come into the market, which will continue to make it a challenging environment,” said Quartly, who added he will continue to work with the province on further changes that can prop up B.C.’s biofuel sector.

The announcement by Dix also comes a day after Conservative Prince George-Mackenzie MLA Kiel Giddens introduced a private member’s bill in the legislature that he said would “level the playing-field” and close the loophole that allows American producers to benefit from the province’s low-fuel standard.

Giddens said Thursday he hadn’t seen the details of Dix’s amendments to the standard yet but was encouraged by the fact he brought forward a bill and the next day the province took action.

“It was really important for government to act now. If it had been several weeks from now, we may have seen the closure of this refinery,” he said, explaining 165 jobs in Prince George depend upon Tidewater Renewables.

“Prince George has really struggled in recent years. We’ve seen a pulp mill go down. We’ve seen mills close in the region. We can’t lose more. This is our resource sector, our base, our community, is based on that.”