White House Weighs Diesel Exports as Prices Hit $6.52; Wright Says a Flat Ban “Doesn’t Work”

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he has told his team to look at keeping more diesel at home as pump prices hit records. “I’ve said let’s not send out the diesel. We make a lot of diesel … I’ve called for it. I’ve called for it within my people,” he told reporters at the United Nations. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, standing with him, said the administration was examining “whether it’s feasible in terms of the overall refining capacity, and whether a full or partial ban would work.” Trump said a decision would come “fast, one way or the other.”

AAA put the national average at $6.52 a gallon Wednesday, up about 76 percent from a year earlier and 91 cents from a month ago. Diesel inventories have fallen below 97 million barrels, about 13 percent under the five-year seasonal average. The Energy Information Administration has said stocks could drop below 100 million barrels. Before the Iran war began Feb. 28, the United States was exporting about 1.1 million barrels a day. The United States is the world’s largest diesel exporter.

Farm-state Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Rep. Tim Burchett, who introduced a bill last week, have pressed for an export pause, arguing more fuel would stay in the domestic market for trucks, trains, and harvest equipment. Trump has also tied part of the price spike to Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries and said he would discuss those attacks with President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright publicly rejected a hard ban. “The blunt tool of banning diesel exports definitely doesn’t work,” he said Wednesday at an Economist event in New York. Refineries that make diesel also make gasoline and jet fuel, he said. If diesel cannot be exported, tanks fill, plants cut runs, and gasoline and jet prices rise. He said the administration was working with refiners in a “simpler, voluntary, cooperative fashion, without using blunt instruments that would reduce refining throughput.” At a Heatmap event he added, “We will not cease exports of U.S. diesel,” though there “may be some tweak in where diesel flows out of U.S. refineries.”

Politico, citing five people familiar with the talks, reported Wednesday that the White House was preparing a 90-day export ban and that Trump was inclined to announce it by week’s end. The same report said Wright, Bessent, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum had objected to a total ban, and that Wright had called energy CEOs Tuesday night saying a 90-day halt was likely. A White House official later told Reuters the administration was not preparing a 90-day ban. After that story, Wright said nobody was considering a flat ban on shipments. “What’s being discussed is what’s the most efficient way to get more diesel into the United States of America, and continue maximum flows of gasoline and jet fuel.”

U.S. ultra-low-sulfur diesel futures fell as much as 6 percent, then about 4 percent, after the Politico report. In Europe, diesel’s premium to Brent jumped above $95 a barrel, a record in Bloomberg data back to 2011. The American Petroleum Institute has argued an export ban would not deliver lasting relief. Analysts at TACenergy have said refiners would cut run rates if overseas sales were blocked. The last broad U.S. curb on energy exports was the crude-oil ban lifted in 2015. Biden officials studied diesel-export limits in 2022 and did not impose them. Wright said policy announcements on fuel supply were coming in the next few days.