Election season politics reshape U.S. diesel strategy

… <div class="article-content"><p><strong>With midterms now less than 40 days away, a ban on U.S. diesel exports has become a hotly debated policy option, with no clear solution to the global refinery shortfalls amidst the twin wars involving the world's largest energy producers.</strong> Retail diesel has risen by around 70%, and gasoline by 50% nationally since the start of the Iran conflict. Faced with increasingly negative polling data, several leading Senate Republicans have publicly called for a diesel export ban, and the President himself signaled an openness to implementing such restrictions. On September 22, he stated "I've said let's not send out the diesel. We make a lot of diesel [...]." And yet, the fact that Energy Secretary Chris Wright publicly called the ban a bad idea shows that this is not a settled issue even if the odds of restrictions have risen in recent weeks.</p> <p><strong>The actual form export restrictions could take could still fall short of a blanket ban, and could include select waivers, be limited in duration, and/or be tied to certain benchmarks.</strong> During the early months of the Ukraine war, some Biden administration officials had been proponents of product export restrictions tied to inventory levels, and this may be a potential policy roadmap for some members of the Trump administration. We also know that President Trump has passed on other policy options to lower product prices such as a proposal by the refinery industry to scale back implementation of the renewable fuel standards, reportedly due to strong opposition from the agricultural lobby.</p> …