President Trump is considering an export ban on diesel fuel after retail prices surged to a record-high level of $6.53 per gallon on September 21. In a new insight, Director of Energy and Environmental Policy Shuting Pomerleau explains why a diesel export ban won’t solve high fuel prices and suggests more productive ways to ease supply frictions.

Key points:

• The United States remains a structural surplus diesel producer—refining roughly 5.3 million barrels per day (b/d) with domestic demand of 3.6 million b/d.
• An export ban would not lower pump prices because existing pipeline bottlenecks force regions such as New England and the West Coast to rely on waterborne imports; an export ban would trap Gulf Coast supplies in the region and compel refiners to cut daily output, driving up prices for gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel.
• With U.S. exports supplying 1.5 million barrels per day—about one-fifth of global seaborne diesel trade—an export ban would severely tighten world markets; instead, policymakers should ease winter supply frictions by extending the Jones Act waiver and removing burdensome preclearance rules.

Read the analysis.