Oil is a global commodity. American companies sell that oil to whoever pays the most and buy oil from whoever sells it for the least. Preventing American companies from selling to other countries doesn't mean they will turn around and sell at a loss (willingly) to Americans. Unless of course, you want the state to take control, which would be ironic coming from the party of "small" government.
True, but so many Americans have no clue at all about the most basic economic concepts. Trump & his supporters both really think he can just wave his hand and decide what prices are
I also understand we really don’t have the infrastructure en masse to refine our domestic oil. That’s one of the reasons we import the oil we do refine and export our raw. So it doesn’t make any f’n sense
We refine a lot of our domestic oil. The fact is we also have some of the best refineries in the world for handling heavier crude. So we import heavy crude and export light crude.
This is a relic of Venezuela exporting 3m bpd. The Canadian oil sands are a new source also.
US gulf refineries can refine heavy crude a lot cheaper than most of the world can.
I was once told that our oil is alot lighter and "sweeter", especially shale oil, and as a result it is easier to refine. Which is why other countries buy it at a premium, because they don't have the advanced refinery tech or infrastructure to refine heavy dirty oil with high sulfur content. The US on the other hand has some of the most advanced refinery infrastructure and technology in the world to refine very crude, heavy oil. Much of that infrastructure was built a long time ago before domestic oil was sweet and light and so we prefer the dirtier oil for our existing infrastructure. Since most countries can't use heavy, dirty oil in their refineries, we get to buy it for cheap from organizations like OPEC.
And if a government uses tarrifs to encourage the construction of more local refineries... then these refineries are going to be making some very expensive fuel.
Where are you gonna hold all this diesel? You gotta store it somewhere in America don’t you if there’s an export ban? I’m guessing if you store it someplace it’s gonna get taxed making the price more expensive to hold. Don’t act like there isn’t a solution to this problem. let’s not forget the rich are the Epstein class who have been caught eating babies and having sex with children, you’re in no position for leadership or decision-making…sit down
The US is exporting a ton of diesel right now and the margins on it are extremely high. Profits are well beyond the price per barrel price expectation.
A lot of Russian and middle eastern diesel exports are down right now. In addition refineries outside of the US a few are having oil supply issues.
If the US capped the export volume US prices would stabilize close to the prices expected from current oil prices.
It would also send diesel prices way up in Europe and elsewhere, with large scale physical shortages likely occurring.
Diesel should not be $7 with our current oil prices. This is a result of refining shortage in that section of the distillate market.
Also note I am against such an export restriction. We did this to the world market, and should suffer along eith the rest.
Even if exports are capped, what is the mechanism that would actually lower prices? The rest of the world, as you noted, is going to experience even higher diesel prices in the event of export controls, and it's already super high, so it's not like Americans will be able to buy diesel from other countries for less than they can get it here from export-capped American companies. That means, in effect, that American oil producers have a captive market under export controls. Diesel demand is largely inflexible because of how critical it is to all industries. The cost of diesel simply gets passed down the chain. By the time diesel demand actually lowered enough to matter, we would likely be deep in a recession and up shit's creek anyways.
Like am I missing something here, some gotcha that makes export controls do anything to resolve the price of diesel? If storage of excess oil is the problem, then surely they could reduce production / supply before reducing price.
This would cap the market size that US diesel production can sell to. This would decouple world and US diesel prices.
Right now, there isn't enough diesel in the world to go around. Thus, the high prices. The US actually produces more Diesel than it needs and is the number one exporter in the world. Capping diesel would technically lower US prices, as selling diesel at-cost is better than not selling diesel.
In reality US refineries which have been putting off a lot of maintenance due to record profits would start a large round of maintenance projects which would drop US diesel production pushing prices up again through the duration of the export moratorium.
One scary aspect is eventually refineries wont be able to put off these maintenance outages and diesel supply will drop even more.
Exactly my point. Nothing says they have to produce the same amount of diesel that they do now, if they think they're overproducing they can cut back production. Scratch that, they will cut production if they can't sell all the fuel they produce. At least as long as it takes for the shocks to fully propogate through the economy. Eventually demand for diesel goes down as price increases trickle down to the consumers, and they buy less things that need to be manufactured, handled, and delivered with diesel fuel. But by the time diesel demand and prices fall enough to make a dent, we will likely already be in a recession, because the only real reason diesel demand would fall significantly is if economic activity has slowed commensurately.
What makes you think that the companies are going to lower the price domestically? If they can't sell it on the global market, they can still sell it here for the exact same price. They are not going to cut into our profits for some sense of loyalty. They're multinational corporations. They are not loyal to any country or people.
They are legally obligated to make as much money as possible for their shareholders. They're not going to do that lowering prices.
Let's pretend for a minute that global commodity pricing for diesel is $100 a barrel. If American businesses can't sell that diesel at the commodity pricing due to export controls, they'll just sell diesel for $99.90 a barrel domestically. They can simply cut production and lower the supply if they end up overproducing.
As I said in my other comment, demand for diesel is mostly inflexible. Farmers can't just say "Ah damn, diesel is high, I guess I won't harvest half my crops". Retailers can't just decide to send less trucks when they use JIT inventory and lean stock to function, the shipments have to keep flowing or everything breaks down. Just about every industry relies on diesel to function and operate, it's not usually practical for businesses to cut fuel consumption commensurately to avoid higher fuel costs, since any smart company is already being as efficient as possible with fuel consumption.
The only way diesel prices come down are if the global commodity pricing gets lower, which is definitely not happening with export controls. OR, if the government forces these companies to sell at reasonable margins, but again this goes back to how Republicans foam at the mouth when anyone suggests government control over the free market. If they truly believed that, then having the government step in to resolve the pricing crisis would be completely off the table. So then we are back to square one: in order for domestic prices to go down, the global prices need to be lower than domestic, forcing them to compete. With export controls and skyrocketing global prices, American oil companies have zero incentive to sell oil for even a penny less than they absolutely have to. And again, if global prices are $100 a barrel, US oil producers only need to sell at 99.90 a barrel to keep the profits flowing, so that's exactly what they will do.
Price fixing, even if done indirectly. None of the oil producers are going to look at record profits and decide they need to start a huge price war to get prices down as much as possible. The vast vast majority of large corporations these days spend alot of money on market research, so they don't accidentally overcompete and leave profits on the table. Why would Exxon sell oil for $50 when everyone else is selling for $99, if anything Exxon might sell for $98.50 if they wanted to undercut the competition. There are nowhere near enough real competitors to the gigantic petrolium megacorporations to guarantee free market rates. This is happening in many industries where we have allowed overwhelming consolidation and vertical integration.
They will not sell diesel or any petroleum products at a penny less than they absolutely have to. And if you have long term export controls, they will just trim production down as soon as it becomes feasible to do so. And if you want to crash the price of diesel domestically, you're guaranteeing they won't be building new refineries, they won't continue operating older refineries that are not profitable below a certain price, whatever they have to do to trim excess, they will do it as soon as possible. So in the best case scenario, you might have a brief period of oversupply and lower prices, but only temporarily.
Yea right now. But prohibiting fuel exports will lower prices. And yes, refineries will adjust production rates to exploit current economics. But, these facilities DO NOT just turn on and off based on fuel cost fluctuations.
They will run these facilities at minimum rates (which is misused in thousand barrels per day) at bare minimum margins over shutting down completely because they are designed to always be running. It’s literally cheaper to run at minimum rates at low margins than to shut down.
You also don’t really understand the huge amounts of money they are making right now.
I don't like this part.
In reality, a ban on exports would
actually push prices higher
, according to American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), a trade association that represents the fossil fuel industry.
and
"In the meantime, give the White House credit for resisting the allure of this bad idea."
Yeah, I don’t think the ban would end up working, but relying on a testimony from the very people who have the most to gain from preventing a ban? Ridiculous. It’s honestly bad journalism to quote them without mentioning the obvious conflict of interest
Beside that, it is going to really piss off our allies AGAIN. Not only did the US create this mess, now removing 1.6MM bbl/d from their supply is going to add to shortages and increase their prices even more.
I'm not clear why it would be a total export ban necessarily since the US produces more than it uses. And it also isn't clesr to me why refineries would do deferrable maintenance when Crack spreads are at or near record highs and far above normal. It makes more sense to refine as much as they can while margins are abnormally high.
True, but the US lacks the infrastructure to efficiently move the diesel from its refineries to all the places in the US that need it. Northern states get their diesel from Canada.
only if there is a full export ban. which would make little sense for 2 reasons - 1) yes, it would slow down production leading to less non-diesel products, which would be counter-productive 2) It would make no sense, other than perhaps filling up storage. but once that's done, there would be no benefit to keeping that diesel off the world market for anyone
Brazil provides an interesting comparison here.
Since 2024, we've seen an extremely rapid shift toward electrified vehicles. That doesn't mean EVs have already replaced combustion cars in the Brazilian market — they haven't. But the direction is striking.
Brazil sold about 177,000 electrified light vehicles in 2024 and 224,000 in 2025. More interestingly, the market is increasingly choosing plug-in vehicles rather than conventional hybrids. In 2025, BEVs and PHEVs represented about 81% of electrified-vehicle sales. PHEVs alone sold more than 100,000 units, while BEVs reached roughly 80,000.
So Brazilian consumers are increasingly being offered another response to fuel-price volatility: reduce their dependence on liquid fuel altogether.
That's something I think is missing from a lot of American discussions about gasoline and diesel prices. The debate frequently becomes “How do we make gasoline cheaper?” or “Should we restrict fuel exports?” when another question should be: why does transportation have to remain so dependent on gasoline and diesel in the first place?
And this doesn't require Americans to jump immediately from a V8 pickup to a tiny BEV.
PHEVs are an obvious transitional technology. For someone who can charge at home, most everyday commuting can potentially be electric while the combustion engine remains available for long trips. You still have an engine in the car; it simply doesn't need to run every time you drive.
Even for people who genuinely enjoy combustion engines, nobody is proposing that enjoying engine sound should determine the propulsion technology of every vehicle sold. Enthusiast cars can exist while ordinary commuting gradually electrifies.
Brazil is particularly interesting because we're an oil-producing country and still aren't insulated from international petroleum and refined-fuel markets. Domestic fuel prices don't exist in an economic vacuum simply because a country produces oil. Refining capacity, imports, exchange rates, international prices, taxes, distribution and domestic pricing policy all matter.
Petrobras also makes the Brazilian situation different from the US. Brazil has a large state-controlled oil company with enormous influence over refining and fuel supply, although that obviously doesn't mean the government can simply dictate every retail fuel price. We still have private distributors, importers and retailers and exposure to international markets.
That's why I think electrification should also be understood as an energy-security and price-risk issue, not only an environmental one.
Every commuter who can do most of their driving on electricity is a commuter whose transportation budget becomes less directly exposed to the next oil shock.
The US has an enormous domestic oil industry, but that doesn't eliminate exposure to global oil prices either. Instead of endlessly trying to engineer permanently cheap gasoline, it seems reasonable to give consumers more ways to simply need less gasoline.
BEVs can do that completely. PHEVs can do it partially while retaining the familiarity and long-distance flexibility of a combustion engine.
Brazil's recent market growth suggests that when consumers actually receive competitively priced plug-in options, a meaningful number of them are willing to make that transition.
The devil is in the details, and Trump is an idiot.
When he says Ban it could mean a cap. As in the national market is served at a mandated volume and rate where any production surplus is then sold on the international market.
Such a system would indeed lower national rates even in the face of sky-high international rates.
It would of course piss off the US oil barons to the point that they’ll be plotting his end.
How it’s done is everything and Trump couldn’t communicate a clear message if it was written across his forehead.
Reading the comments here, I think some people are confusing government intervention in a market with communism. Those are very different things, and Brazil provides a useful real-world example.
Brazil has Petrobras, a state-controlled oil company that remains dominant in domestic refining. Yet that does not mean the Brazilian government simply determines what I pay at the gas station.
Petrobras can lower the price at which it sells gasoline or diesel to distributors and that reduction does not necessarily reach consumers in the same proportion.
Why? Because Petrobras no longer controls the whole downstream chain. Its former distribution subsidiary, BR Distribuidora, was privatized and eventually became Vibra. Petrobras sells fuel to distributors; distributors and retailers operate further down the chain. Taxes, biofuel blending, distribution and retail margins, inventories and local competition all affect the final pump price.
In fact, Petrobras itself explicitly tells Brazilians: the price at the pump is not the Petrobras price.
That's an important distinction because having a state-controlled producer is not the same thing as having a centrally planned fuel market.
Diesel makes the Brazilian example even more interesting.
Brazil produces a lot of oil and has a large refining system, yet it still imports a substantial amount of diesel. In 2025, diesel imports reached a record 17.3 billion liters and represented more than 20% of national consumption.
And diesel matters far beyond diesel-car owners. Brazil remains extremely dependent on road freight. If diesel becomes substantially more expensive, transportation costs can propagate through agriculture, supermarkets, construction and industrial supply chains. Ultimately somebody has to pay for moving those goods.
So an external diesel shock can become an inflation problem throughout the economy.
This is also why saying “just control the price” misses the underlying problem. You can subsidize fuel, change taxes, change Petrobras' refinery prices or restrict trade, but none of those policies magically creates additional refining capacity or eliminates Brazil's dependence on imported diesel.
And we're seeing something else beginning to happen in Brazil: electrification is slowly attacking the demand side of the equation.
This doesn't mean Brazilian gasoline demand has suddenly collapsed because of EVs. It hasn't. But analysts are already measuring how much gasoline and ethanol consumption is being avoided because part of the fleet is becoming electrified. One recent projection estimates that the amount of gasoline-equivalent fuel displaced by electrification could almost double between 2026 and 2030.
That's where I think the American fuel-price debate sometimes becomes strangely narrow.
Everyone argues about how to make gasoline or diesel cheaper: export restrictions, tariffs, drilling, refinery capacity, subsidies, taxes.
But there is another way to reduce the economic impact of expensive petroleum:
need less petroleum.
You don't even have to jump directly from an ICE vehicle to a BEV. PHEVs can move a substantial share of everyday driving onto electricity while retaining an engine for longer journeys.
If millions of commuters stop burning gasoline during their daily commute, that's demand permanently removed from the gasoline market. No export ban is required for those gallons because those drivers simply don't need them anymore.
Brazil is beginning to experience this on a relatively small scale, and analysts already expect the effect to grow.
So I find the “COMMUNISM!” comments here pretty funny from an economic perspective. A state-owned oil producer, private distributors, private gas stations, imported fuel, regulated taxes, subsidies and competing technologies can all coexist inside a market economy.
The interesting economic question isn't “government intervention or communism?”
It's how you design an energy market where consumers aren't completely exposed to one commodity and one transportation technology every time there is an international oil shock
Oh come on! You cannot mean that Trump is lying again, lol. Or maybe he isn’t, and he just has no clue how economics works. That’s even more frightening
I don't think that banning exports is a particularly good idea. That said, the economic "analysis" provided in the linked article seems very shaky.
To summarize the article: The U.S. refines 5 million barrels per day and consumes 3.6 million. If exports are banned, the refiners will continue to refine 5 million per day until they run out of storage space. Then the refiners will start refining less because of lack of storage. When they refine less, then the price will go up.
That argument does not make sense or omits many important factors. Not sure why refiners would refine diesel that they couldn't sell and then pay to store it. Not sure that refining less in the face of reduced demand (current capacity - export = new demand level) would inherently raise domestic diesel prices. It would reduce global supply by 1.4 million barrels per day and that could affect prices paid by international shippers (I have no idea if 1.4 million barrels is .001% or 20% of daily global consumption; I would guess somewhere in between). Also, the article doesn't take into account any of the complexities of refinery operation and the source of crude used for diesel and whether that crude could be repurposed for other products).
Bottom line, the Reason article add no useful information beyond the fact that the petroleum companies don't want a ban.
Diesel in storage is really low right now, refineries would produce a surplus for a few days until storage is back to normal though there's still the problem of how to get millions of barrels of diesel from Texas to California or Michigan or New York outside of the normal flow of products.
From what I understand (and I'm no expert), the US only imports around 5-10% of its diesel. I have no idea how complicated it would be to move that from current US based refineries to areas where it is imported from. It isn't as if we have to redo half the supply chain.
Jodid0 | a day ago
Water is wet, sky is blue type article.
Oil is a global commodity. American companies sell that oil to whoever pays the most and buy oil from whoever sells it for the least. Preventing American companies from selling to other countries doesn't mean they will turn around and sell at a loss (willingly) to Americans. Unless of course, you want the state to take control, which would be ironic coming from the party of "small" government.
ScoffersGonnaScoff | a day ago
Banning diesel exports,
Government ownership in publicly traded companies,
Tampering with free markets using absurd tariffs,
Scott Besant with his bond market endeavors,
$5000 checks promised to people,
I’m sure I’m missing many other things,….
These types of things are exactly like communism.
Erinaceous | a day ago
These things are exactly like state capitalism. To have communism you would have to have some kind of basic support for working people.
hughcifer-106103 | 3 hours ago
Also very much exactly fascism
ILearnedTheHardaway | a day ago
Hey we’ll probably be getting bread lines pretty soon then!
ScoffersGonnaScoff | a day ago
What a waste of tax dollars, let them have cake
woah_man | a day ago
Sorry, we actually outsourced our cake-making factories to Mexico. Only half joking on that.
Lord-Cartographer55 | a day ago
Like Oreos, the jokes write themselves
Emotional_Goal9525 | 13 hours ago
Rather urban garden plots and famines.
matjoeman | 14 hours ago
Communism is only bad when liberals do it. /s
Rodot | 13 hours ago
Communism is when corporate capitalists run the government of a capitalist country with an intent on increasing their capital.
glorifindel | a day ago
COMMUNISM!
boss_flog | 10 hours ago
it's not because workers in this scenario still dont own the means of production
ActualSpiders | a day ago
True, but so many Americans have no clue at all about the most basic economic concepts. Trump & his supporters both really think he can just wave his hand and decide what prices are
BadAtExisting | a day ago
I also understand we really don’t have the infrastructure en masse to refine our domestic oil. That’s one of the reasons we import the oil we do refine and export our raw. So it doesn’t make any f’n sense
Drak_is_Right | a day ago
We refine a lot of our domestic oil. The fact is we also have some of the best refineries in the world for handling heavier crude. So we import heavy crude and export light crude.
This is a relic of Venezuela exporting 3m bpd. The Canadian oil sands are a new source also.
US gulf refineries can refine heavy crude a lot cheaper than most of the world can.
Jodid0 | a day ago
I was once told that our oil is alot lighter and "sweeter", especially shale oil, and as a result it is easier to refine. Which is why other countries buy it at a premium, because they don't have the advanced refinery tech or infrastructure to refine heavy dirty oil with high sulfur content. The US on the other hand has some of the most advanced refinery infrastructure and technology in the world to refine very crude, heavy oil. Much of that infrastructure was built a long time ago before domestic oil was sweet and light and so we prefer the dirtier oil for our existing infrastructure. Since most countries can't use heavy, dirty oil in their refineries, we get to buy it for cheap from organizations like OPEC.
Opposite-Program8490 | 20 hours ago
Billionaires made that choice, and they'll twist themselves in knots trying to make excuses.
It makes sense if you just accept that their profits are more important than us.
CliftonForce | a day ago
And if a government uses tarrifs to encourage the construction of more local refineries... then these refineries are going to be making some very expensive fuel.
Sorry_Exercise_9603 | 23 hours ago
Loss? The crack spread is $100 a barrel where normally it’s $30.
Initial-Meeting362 | a day ago
Frauds
mdwatkins13 | a day ago
Where are you gonna hold all this diesel? You gotta store it somewhere in America don’t you if there’s an export ban? I’m guessing if you store it someplace it’s gonna get taxed making the price more expensive to hold. Don’t act like there isn’t a solution to this problem. let’s not forget the rich are the Epstein class who have been caught eating babies and having sex with children, you’re in no position for leadership or decision-making…sit down
Drak_is_Right | a day ago
You are wrong.
The US is exporting a ton of diesel right now and the margins on it are extremely high. Profits are well beyond the price per barrel price expectation.
A lot of Russian and middle eastern diesel exports are down right now. In addition refineries outside of the US a few are having oil supply issues.
If the US capped the export volume US prices would stabilize close to the prices expected from current oil prices.
It would also send diesel prices way up in Europe and elsewhere, with large scale physical shortages likely occurring.
Diesel should not be $7 with our current oil prices. This is a result of refining shortage in that section of the distillate market.
Also note I am against such an export restriction. We did this to the world market, and should suffer along eith the rest.
Jodid0 | a day ago
Even if exports are capped, what is the mechanism that would actually lower prices? The rest of the world, as you noted, is going to experience even higher diesel prices in the event of export controls, and it's already super high, so it's not like Americans will be able to buy diesel from other countries for less than they can get it here from export-capped American companies. That means, in effect, that American oil producers have a captive market under export controls. Diesel demand is largely inflexible because of how critical it is to all industries. The cost of diesel simply gets passed down the chain. By the time diesel demand actually lowered enough to matter, we would likely be deep in a recession and up shit's creek anyways.
Like am I missing something here, some gotcha that makes export controls do anything to resolve the price of diesel? If storage of excess oil is the problem, then surely they could reduce production / supply before reducing price.
Drak_is_Right | a day ago
This would cap the market size that US diesel production can sell to. This would decouple world and US diesel prices.
Right now, there isn't enough diesel in the world to go around. Thus, the high prices. The US actually produces more Diesel than it needs and is the number one exporter in the world. Capping diesel would technically lower US prices, as selling diesel at-cost is better than not selling diesel.
In reality US refineries which have been putting off a lot of maintenance due to record profits would start a large round of maintenance projects which would drop US diesel production pushing prices up again through the duration of the export moratorium.
One scary aspect is eventually refineries wont be able to put off these maintenance outages and diesel supply will drop even more.
Jodid0 | 23 hours ago
Exactly my point. Nothing says they have to produce the same amount of diesel that they do now, if they think they're overproducing they can cut back production. Scratch that, they will cut production if they can't sell all the fuel they produce. At least as long as it takes for the shocks to fully propogate through the economy. Eventually demand for diesel goes down as price increases trickle down to the consumers, and they buy less things that need to be manufactured, handled, and delivered with diesel fuel. But by the time diesel demand and prices fall enough to make a dent, we will likely already be in a recession, because the only real reason diesel demand would fall significantly is if economic activity has slowed commensurately.
Groovychick1978 | 22 hours ago
What makes you think that the companies are going to lower the price domestically? If they can't sell it on the global market, they can still sell it here for the exact same price. They are not going to cut into our profits for some sense of loyalty. They're multinational corporations. They are not loyal to any country or people.
They are legally obligated to make as much money as possible for their shareholders. They're not going to do that lowering prices.
Drak_is_Right | 22 hours ago
Anti-trust collusion laws can come into effect if they do that and collude to keep prices up.
granted our current administration is the most corrupt one in US history.
Groovychick1978 | 22 hours ago
Corporate landlords were shown to be colluding to raise rental prices all over the nation and nothing was done. It is simply allowed.
nochinzilch | a day ago
Why this sudden change in diesel refining capacity?
Drak_is_Right | a day ago
The gulf exported not only crude oil, but a lot of refined fuels. Those refineries are shut down right now.
In addition, a lot of Russian capacity has been off-lined by Ukrainian retaliatory strikes so they have been importing diesel from India I think.
Frequently_lucky | 6 hours ago
They will still sell at a profit, just a bit less profit.
aHumanRaisedByHumans | a day ago
Why wouldn't they sell it domestic at a "loss" if the ban is long term?
Jodid0 | a day ago
Let's pretend for a minute that global commodity pricing for diesel is $100 a barrel. If American businesses can't sell that diesel at the commodity pricing due to export controls, they'll just sell diesel for $99.90 a barrel domestically. They can simply cut production and lower the supply if they end up overproducing.
As I said in my other comment, demand for diesel is mostly inflexible. Farmers can't just say "Ah damn, diesel is high, I guess I won't harvest half my crops". Retailers can't just decide to send less trucks when they use JIT inventory and lean stock to function, the shipments have to keep flowing or everything breaks down. Just about every industry relies on diesel to function and operate, it's not usually practical for businesses to cut fuel consumption commensurately to avoid higher fuel costs, since any smart company is already being as efficient as possible with fuel consumption.
The only way diesel prices come down are if the global commodity pricing gets lower, which is definitely not happening with export controls. OR, if the government forces these companies to sell at reasonable margins, but again this goes back to how Republicans foam at the mouth when anyone suggests government control over the free market. If they truly believed that, then having the government step in to resolve the pricing crisis would be completely off the table. So then we are back to square one: in order for domestic prices to go down, the global prices need to be lower than domestic, forcing them to compete. With export controls and skyrocketing global prices, American oil companies have zero incentive to sell oil for even a penny less than they absolutely have to. And again, if global prices are $100 a barrel, US oil producers only need to sell at 99.90 a barrel to keep the profits flowing, so that's exactly what they will do.
aHumanRaisedByHumans | a day ago
What about competition between the suppliers? Oil isn't a monopoly in the U.S. is it? Why wouldn't they compete and drive that price down more?
Jodid0 | 23 hours ago
Price fixing, even if done indirectly. None of the oil producers are going to look at record profits and decide they need to start a huge price war to get prices down as much as possible. The vast vast majority of large corporations these days spend alot of money on market research, so they don't accidentally overcompete and leave profits on the table. Why would Exxon sell oil for $50 when everyone else is selling for $99, if anything Exxon might sell for $98.50 if they wanted to undercut the competition. There are nowhere near enough real competitors to the gigantic petrolium megacorporations to guarantee free market rates. This is happening in many industries where we have allowed overwhelming consolidation and vertical integration.
Groovychick1978 | 22 hours ago
There is not competition. They collude. They discuss what price they're going to maintain, and then they all maintain that price.
Elderwastaken | 23 hours ago
Yes they will. Refineries have to operate to make money. They do not just “turn off” when prices are not super high.
They have insane margins. They can sell fuel at vastly lower prices and still be profitable.
Groovychick1978 | 22 hours ago
They can do all kinds of things, including selling domestically at cost, but they won't. They don't have to.
They don't have to lower the price at all. They can sell the diesel at the exact same price domestically as they would get on the global market.
And people are going to buy it at that price.
Elderwastaken | 20 hours ago
Unless export controls are implemented. With is the point of the post….
Groovychick1978 | 12 hours ago
The export controls do not compel them to lower prices. It's just an assumption you're making. There's nothing to make them do that.
Jodid0 | 23 hours ago
They will not sell diesel or any petroleum products at a penny less than they absolutely have to. And if you have long term export controls, they will just trim production down as soon as it becomes feasible to do so. And if you want to crash the price of diesel domestically, you're guaranteeing they won't be building new refineries, they won't continue operating older refineries that are not profitable below a certain price, whatever they have to do to trim excess, they will do it as soon as possible. So in the best case scenario, you might have a brief period of oversupply and lower prices, but only temporarily.
Elderwastaken | 20 hours ago
Yea right now. But prohibiting fuel exports will lower prices. And yes, refineries will adjust production rates to exploit current economics. But, these facilities DO NOT just turn on and off based on fuel cost fluctuations.
They will run these facilities at minimum rates (which is misused in thousand barrels per day) at bare minimum margins over shutting down completely because they are designed to always be running. It’s literally cheaper to run at minimum rates at low margins than to shut down.
You also don’t really understand the huge amounts of money they are making right now.
AdPuzzleheaded1495 | a day ago
I don't like this part. In reality, a ban on exports would actually push prices higher , according to American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), a trade association that represents the fossil fuel industry.
and
"In the meantime, give the White House credit for resisting the allure of this bad idea."
thegreatshark | a day ago
Yeah, I don’t think the ban would end up working, but relying on a testimony from the very people who have the most to gain from preventing a ban? Ridiculous. It’s honestly bad journalism to quote them without mentioning the obvious conflict of interest
AdPuzzleheaded1495 | a day ago
100% with your assessment
So_HauserAspen | a day ago
Did those experts graduate top of their class from worton's school of fiscal dumbassery?
AdPuzzleheaded1495 | a day ago
Ahhh, I forgot what the program was called, thank you
OracleofFl | 18 hours ago
Beside that, it is going to really piss off our allies AGAIN. Not only did the US create this mess, now removing 1.6MM bbl/d from their supply is going to add to shortages and increase their prices even more.
VividMonotones | a day ago
https://www.industrialinfo.com/iirenergy/industry-news/article/some-us-refiners-deferring-maintenance-from-2026-to-2027--362613
Refiners would mostly take advantage of an export ban to do the maintenance they had put off until next year.
oscarnyc | 23 hours ago
I'm not clear why it would be a total export ban necessarily since the US produces more than it uses. And it also isn't clesr to me why refineries would do deferrable maintenance when Crack spreads are at or near record highs and far above normal. It makes more sense to refine as much as they can while margins are abnormally high.
Alfador8 | 21 hours ago
>the US produces more than it uses
True, but the US lacks the infrastructure to efficiently move the diesel from its refineries to all the places in the US that need it. Northern states get their diesel from Canada.
OracleofFl | 18 hours ago
The US only imports 4% of its diesel at all with 84% of that 4% from Canada.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/diesel-fuel/where-our-diesel-comes-from.php
Second paragraph.
LoudestHoward | 18 hours ago
If there's an export ban and the US produces more than it uses, then you'd slow down production wouldn't you?
oscarnyc | 18 hours ago
only if there is a full export ban. which would make little sense for 2 reasons - 1) yes, it would slow down production leading to less non-diesel products, which would be counter-productive 2) It would make no sense, other than perhaps filling up storage. but once that's done, there would be no benefit to keeping that diesel off the world market for anyone
OracleofFl | 18 hours ago
If there is an export ban, what are the refiners going to do with the excess oil? Tank it? Might as well reduce supply and do maintenance.
joebraga2 | a day ago
Brazil provides an interesting comparison here. Since 2024, we've seen an extremely rapid shift toward electrified vehicles. That doesn't mean EVs have already replaced combustion cars in the Brazilian market — they haven't. But the direction is striking. Brazil sold about 177,000 electrified light vehicles in 2024 and 224,000 in 2025. More interestingly, the market is increasingly choosing plug-in vehicles rather than conventional hybrids. In 2025, BEVs and PHEVs represented about 81% of electrified-vehicle sales. PHEVs alone sold more than 100,000 units, while BEVs reached roughly 80,000.
So Brazilian consumers are increasingly being offered another response to fuel-price volatility: reduce their dependence on liquid fuel altogether. That's something I think is missing from a lot of American discussions about gasoline and diesel prices. The debate frequently becomes “How do we make gasoline cheaper?” or “Should we restrict fuel exports?” when another question should be: why does transportation have to remain so dependent on gasoline and diesel in the first place?
And this doesn't require Americans to jump immediately from a V8 pickup to a tiny BEV. PHEVs are an obvious transitional technology. For someone who can charge at home, most everyday commuting can potentially be electric while the combustion engine remains available for long trips. You still have an engine in the car; it simply doesn't need to run every time you drive. Even for people who genuinely enjoy combustion engines, nobody is proposing that enjoying engine sound should determine the propulsion technology of every vehicle sold. Enthusiast cars can exist while ordinary commuting gradually electrifies.
Brazil is particularly interesting because we're an oil-producing country and still aren't insulated from international petroleum and refined-fuel markets. Domestic fuel prices don't exist in an economic vacuum simply because a country produces oil. Refining capacity, imports, exchange rates, international prices, taxes, distribution and domestic pricing policy all matter. Petrobras also makes the Brazilian situation different from the US. Brazil has a large state-controlled oil company with enormous influence over refining and fuel supply, although that obviously doesn't mean the government can simply dictate every retail fuel price. We still have private distributors, importers and retailers and exposure to international markets.
That's why I think electrification should also be understood as an energy-security and price-risk issue, not only an environmental one. Every commuter who can do most of their driving on electricity is a commuter whose transportation budget becomes less directly exposed to the next oil shock. The US has an enormous domestic oil industry, but that doesn't eliminate exposure to global oil prices either. Instead of endlessly trying to engineer permanently cheap gasoline, it seems reasonable to give consumers more ways to simply need less gasoline. BEVs can do that completely. PHEVs can do it partially while retaining the familiarity and long-distance flexibility of a combustion engine. Brazil's recent market growth suggests that when consumers actually receive competitively priced plug-in options, a meaningful number of them are willing to make that transition.
Tammer_Stern | a day ago
This is a good comment but could do with being spaced with paragraphs.
joebraga2 | a day ago
Coorected and paragraphed
Tammer_Stern | a day ago
Nice one
in2the4est | a day ago
That would require stable supply of ample electricity. This administration is against clean energy.
Watada | a day ago
Banning exports is another distraction because Operation Epstein's Fury is going so badly.
Iran just announced they will be upping the game. So banning exports will definitely not have an impact after Iran does whatever.
PlanetCosmoX | 22 hours ago
The devil is in the details, and Trump is an idiot.
When he says Ban it could mean a cap. As in the national market is served at a mandated volume and rate where any production surplus is then sold on the international market.
Such a system would indeed lower national rates even in the face of sky-high international rates.
It would of course piss off the US oil barons to the point that they’ll be plotting his end.
How it’s done is everything and Trump couldn’t communicate a clear message if it was written across his forehead.
joebraga2 | a day ago
Reading the comments here, I think some people are confusing government intervention in a market with communism. Those are very different things, and Brazil provides a useful real-world example. Brazil has Petrobras, a state-controlled oil company that remains dominant in domestic refining. Yet that does not mean the Brazilian government simply determines what I pay at the gas station.
Petrobras can lower the price at which it sells gasoline or diesel to distributors and that reduction does not necessarily reach consumers in the same proportion. Why? Because Petrobras no longer controls the whole downstream chain. Its former distribution subsidiary, BR Distribuidora, was privatized and eventually became Vibra. Petrobras sells fuel to distributors; distributors and retailers operate further down the chain. Taxes, biofuel blending, distribution and retail margins, inventories and local competition all affect the final pump price. In fact, Petrobras itself explicitly tells Brazilians: the price at the pump is not the Petrobras price. That's an important distinction because having a state-controlled producer is not the same thing as having a centrally planned fuel market. Diesel makes the Brazilian example even more interesting.
Brazil produces a lot of oil and has a large refining system, yet it still imports a substantial amount of diesel. In 2025, diesel imports reached a record 17.3 billion liters and represented more than 20% of national consumption. And diesel matters far beyond diesel-car owners. Brazil remains extremely dependent on road freight. If diesel becomes substantially more expensive, transportation costs can propagate through agriculture, supermarkets, construction and industrial supply chains. Ultimately somebody has to pay for moving those goods. So an external diesel shock can become an inflation problem throughout the economy. This is also why saying “just control the price” misses the underlying problem. You can subsidize fuel, change taxes, change Petrobras' refinery prices or restrict trade, but none of those policies magically creates additional refining capacity or eliminates Brazil's dependence on imported diesel.
And we're seeing something else beginning to happen in Brazil: electrification is slowly attacking the demand side of the equation. This doesn't mean Brazilian gasoline demand has suddenly collapsed because of EVs. It hasn't. But analysts are already measuring how much gasoline and ethanol consumption is being avoided because part of the fleet is becoming electrified. One recent projection estimates that the amount of gasoline-equivalent fuel displaced by electrification could almost double between 2026 and 2030. That's where I think the American fuel-price debate sometimes becomes strangely narrow. Everyone argues about how to make gasoline or diesel cheaper: export restrictions, tariffs, drilling, refinery capacity, subsidies, taxes. But there is another way to reduce the economic impact of expensive petroleum: need less petroleum.
You don't even have to jump directly from an ICE vehicle to a BEV. PHEVs can move a substantial share of everyday driving onto electricity while retaining an engine for longer journeys. If millions of commuters stop burning gasoline during their daily commute, that's demand permanently removed from the gasoline market. No export ban is required for those gallons because those drivers simply don't need them anymore. Brazil is beginning to experience this on a relatively small scale, and analysts already expect the effect to grow.
So I find the “COMMUNISM!” comments here pretty funny from an economic perspective. A state-owned oil producer, private distributors, private gas stations, imported fuel, regulated taxes, subsidies and competing technologies can all coexist inside a market economy. The interesting economic question isn't “government intervention or communism?” It's how you design an energy market where consumers aren't completely exposed to one commodity and one transportation technology every time there is an international oil shock
onicut | 5 hours ago
Oh come on! You cannot mean that Trump is lying again, lol. Or maybe he isn’t, and he just has no clue how economics works. That’s even more frightening
gn63 | a day ago
I don't think that banning exports is a particularly good idea. That said, the economic "analysis" provided in the linked article seems very shaky.
To summarize the article: The U.S. refines 5 million barrels per day and consumes 3.6 million. If exports are banned, the refiners will continue to refine 5 million per day until they run out of storage space. Then the refiners will start refining less because of lack of storage. When they refine less, then the price will go up.
That argument does not make sense or omits many important factors. Not sure why refiners would refine diesel that they couldn't sell and then pay to store it. Not sure that refining less in the face of reduced demand (current capacity - export = new demand level) would inherently raise domestic diesel prices. It would reduce global supply by 1.4 million barrels per day and that could affect prices paid by international shippers (I have no idea if 1.4 million barrels is .001% or 20% of daily global consumption; I would guess somewhere in between). Also, the article doesn't take into account any of the complexities of refinery operation and the source of crude used for diesel and whether that crude could be repurposed for other products).
Bottom line, the Reason article add no useful information beyond the fact that the petroleum companies don't want a ban.
Ketaskooter | a day ago
Diesel in storage is really low right now, refineries would produce a surplus for a few days until storage is back to normal though there's still the problem of how to get millions of barrels of diesel from Texas to California or Michigan or New York outside of the normal flow of products.
oscarnyc | 23 hours ago
From what I understand (and I'm no expert), the US only imports around 5-10% of its diesel. I have no idea how complicated it would be to move that from current US based refineries to areas where it is imported from. It isn't as if we have to redo half the supply chain.