Soybean Oil
CME Group - CBOT
The cooking oil that renewable diesel turned into an energy commodity.
Top Producers
share of 2025/26 production
Top Consumers
share of 2025/26 consumption (food plus biofuel)
Main Uses
global soybean oil use by category, 2025/26 (USDA)
Top Exporters
share of 2025/26 exports
Top Importers
share of 2025/26 imports
Global production
roughly 62 million tonnes
as of 2025
US production into biofuel
roughly half
as of 2025
Record price
roughly 90 cents per pound (June 2022)
as of 2025
Largest exporter
Argentina
as of 2025
Soybean oil is the second most produced vegetable oil in the world after palm, roughly 62 million tonnes a year, and it underwent the most dramatic rerating in agriculture in the 2020s. For decades bean oil was the lower-value crush product, a cooking oil competing with palm and canola on grocery economics. Then US renewable diesel capacity, propelled by California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard and federal blending credits, expanded several-fold between 2021 and 2024, and refiners discovered they could hydrotreat vegetable oil into drop-in diesel. Soybean oil futures, which had spent years in the 30s of cents per pound, ran to roughly 90 cents in mid-2022. Biomass-based diesel now consumes roughly half of US soybean oil production, and the CBOT oil contract trades off EPA blending mandates, the 45Z clean fuel tax credit, and crude oil as much as off crop weather.
The repricing rewired the whole oilseed complex. Crushers built new plants to chase oil value, the oilshare (oil's share of total crush product value) climbed from roughly a third toward half, and the meal market inherited the surplus. Globally, bean oil trades in a tight substitution web with palm oil, the volume leader from Indonesia and Malaysia, and with rapeseed and sunflower oil from the Black Sea; the palm-soy spread is the market's daily arbitrage. Argentina is the largest exporter of soybean oil itself, while US production increasingly stays home for fuel. The contract is 60,000 pounds, quoted in cents per pound, physically delivered, and its policy sensitivity, one EPA volume announcement can move it 10 percent in a session, makes it the most Washington-driven contract in the grain room.
How It Trades
| Venue | CME Group - Chicago Board of Trade |
| Benchmark contract | CBOT Soybean Oil futures (BO, electronic ZL) |
| Contract size | 60,000 pounds (roughly 27 tonnes) |
| Price terms | US cents per pound |
| Settlement | Physical delivery via shipping certificates at approved crushing and refining facilities |
| Typical curve | Modest carry in normal markets; policy announcements and crude oil moves shift the whole curve in parallel |
| Liquidity | Liquid; roughly 100,000 to 150,000 contracts a day, with flows increasingly linked to energy desks |
Where It Trades
approximate share of global futures volume, 2025
Supply and Demand
Top producers
- China: largest producer by crush, consumed domestically
- United States: roughly 13 million tonnes, increasingly burned as renewable diesel
- Brazil: roughly 11 million tonnes
- Argentina: roughly 8 million tonnes, the world's largest exporter of bean oil
- European Union
Top consumers
- China
- United States (food plus roughly half of domestic supply into biofuel)
- India (major importer of all vegetable oils)
- Brazil (food plus biodiesel blending)
Major uses
- Cooking oil and food manufacturing
- Renewable diesel and biodiesel feedstock
- Industrial uses: lubricants, paints, oleochemicals
What Moves the Price
- US biofuel policy: EPA Renewable Volume Obligations, the 45Z clean fuel production credit, and state LCFS programs
- Crude oil and diesel prices, which set the value of renewable diesel
- The palm-soy spread and Indonesian and Malaysian palm supply
- US and South American crush rates and crop sizes
- Indian import duties and buying pace, the swing demand for world vegetable oils
- Black Sea sunflower oil availability
- Used cooking oil and tallow imports competing for US biofuel feedstock slots
Moments That Made the Market
1950
CBOT lists soybean oil futures.
2007-2008
The first biofuel boom and crude's run to $147 drag bean oil to then-record highs above 70 cents per pound.
2021
Renewable diesel capacity announcements begin the structural rerating of US vegetable oil demand.
2022
War in Ukraine cuts off sunflower oil, Indonesia briefly bans palm exports, and bean oil prints a record near 90 cents per pound.
2023-2024
A wave of new US crush plants and renewable diesel refineries comes online; the oilshare of crush value climbs toward half.
2025
The 45Z credit replaces the blender's credit, favoring domestic feedstocks; EPA proposes record biomass-diesel volumes and bean oil rallies.
What Changed Since the 2010 Handbook Era
- Renewable diesel turned bean oil from a food by-product into an energy feedstock; roughly half of US production now goes to fuel.
- The oilshare of crush value rose from roughly a third toward half, inverting the historical meal-driven crush logic.
- US bean oil exports collapsed as domestic fuel demand absorbed supply; Argentina consolidated the export market.
- Washington policy (EPA volumes, tax credits, LCFS) became a bigger daily driver than crop weather.
- Bean oil's correlation with crude oil and diesel tightened to the point that energy desks now trade the contract.