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US Biofuels Update: Soybean Oil Rallies on Biofuel Demand, Soybeans Slip on Technical Selling

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Biofuels feedstock futures closed mixed on Thursday, with soybeans hitting year and multi-year highs, amid technically driven selling pressure, while soybean oil rallied.

The Chicago Board of Trade November soybean futures contract closed 0.06% lower at $12.36 1/4 per bushel, while the CBOT September soybean oil futures contract settled 1.89% higher at 71.18 cents per pound.

The Nymex October ethanol futures contract settled unchanged on Tuesday at $2.04 per gallon.

Rhett Montgomery, a DTN analyst, said the soybean market faced pressure from traders who viewed prices as overbought.

"The November contract narrowly snapped a four-day win streak, having moved higher in response to lower yield thoughts from the Midwest crop tour this week as well as very good demand, especially on the export market," Montgomery said.

The US Department of Agriculture shared another round of overall supportive data on Thursday morning.

For the week ending August 13, 2026, USDA reported an increase of 3.1 million bushels or 85,000 mt of soybean export sales in 2025-26 and an increase of 63.3 mb or 1,723,000 mt for 2026-27.

Last week's export shipments of 14.9 mb were below the 17.9 mb needed each week to achieve USDA's export estimate of 1.520 bb in 2025-26.

Soybean export commitments now total 1.539 billion bushels for 2025-26, down 18% from a year ago. That is ahead of USDA's estimated pace, even as its estimate of US ending soybean stocks is 11% larger than the previous five-year average.

Separately, USDA announced on Thursday sales of 150,000 mt of soybeans for delivery to unknown destinations during the 2026/2027 marketing year.

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