Speaking to a forum hosted by the Economist in New York, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright explained that banning the export of diesel fuel will do nothing to impact the price of diesel fuel and would, eventually, raise the price.
The reasoning is simple.
“The blunt tool of banning diesel exports definitely doesn’t work,” Wright said. “If you can’t export the diesel that comes out of our refineries, you run out of places to store it, and you have to reduce US refining, which would put upward pressure on gasoline prices and jet fuel prices,” Wright said.
The part that Wright didn’t say is the component of price that is entirely detached from supply/demand. The pump price is determined by market speculators, commodity traders and multinational financial interests. That “market price” has nothing to do with the amount of diesel in the inventory.
Restricting exports, a process that ends with restricting production, only gives the speculators and traders a justification to project higher prices. The USA ends up swimming in diesel fuel as the pump price climbs to $15/gal.
If you want to end the disconnection of supply to price, you have to do what Russia does. Sell outside the “market price” at the production cost + profit margin.
In the “west” it’s a rigged game; but be careful. The DSA crowd wants to change the game’s outcome by changing the referees who can then ban/control the players.
Trump’s MAGAnomic approach changes the rulebook of the game completely and is more in line with Putin (BRICS).
George Carlin previously explained it.
Sorry, no. Prices will go down before the Midterms. It will happen.
After the 90 days, it will go back up.
And what EXACTLY will cause prices to go down? Please elaborate.
Because market speculators, commodity traders and multinational financial interests support Trump’s agenda in the midterms?
Matt is one of those useful types….
Create more storage in the USA. Create more detachment from the game the speculators play. China did it and are able to weather the storm better than us.
Since we don’t have a supply problem….at all…..how is your idea going to help prices??
We have supply but need more storage, and also some more refining capability.
China has been able to weather Venezuela and the Iran war, even though they are huge importers of Iranian oil, because of their massive storage and reserves. Reserves allow you to disconnect from the game of the globalists in the same way having a several year cash/US Treasuries reserve account helps a retired individual through market downturns, allowing them to not be forced to sell their investments at a loss during downturns.
America First means immunizing ourselves from international market fluctuations through our own manufacturing capabilities as well as keeping a significant inventory of critical supplies and materials.
We need increased REFINING ABILITY worse than anything. Thank the earth worshipping Climate Change Cult for us not having it.
Ideally, individuals or co-ops would buy processors and make their own diesel. As little as $20K for a machine depending on quantity needed and timeline. The per gallon price would be less than $4. You just need a source for vegetable oil (new or used) and that’s often tied up in contracts between restaurants and recyclers, but not impossible to procure.
Unfortunately gasoline is much more refined and complicated so that’s not an option.
The US is exporting excess diesel.
per AI:
No, the ExxonMobil Joliet Refinery was not fully back online as of September 23, 2026, nearly one week after its shutdown.
Even if you had the billions $$$ that would take, you don’t have the time BEFORE the elections. The price is being manipulated by people who want the price to hurt. When has diesel EVER been $2 more than gasoline? There’s no historic precedent. When it’s no longer useful, the high prices will come down. Right after the elections. Especially if Democrats win, so they can erroneously take the credit.
I’m talking long term, not in relation to a single election.
China has been adding tank space that can hold diesel, especially at independent (“teapot”) refineries and new terminals, yet the large, well-documented buildout of the last two years is almost entirely crude oil storage, not finished diesel.
George Carlin was a wise man ahead of the times.
Yes, he was, so was Orwell and Rand.
Lets not forget that the same commodities mentality exists for our food supply as well.
Exactly.
The US does NOT have a supply problem with diesel. That’s why there is so much for export.
Whoever in the Trump Administration that floated this stupid idea needs to be fired.
I think they were responding to outside knee jerk demands (social media for example) that exports be banned.
Love the Carlin skit. Seen it several times and it only gets more prescient with time. Language is rough but can’t argue with his interpretation of events.
We were told the fuel storage tanks ARE empty. Let’s build up the storage, the price will drop and demand will increase within the USA. If we get full storage then allow staged exports.
The National Petroleum Reserve storage tanks on the Gulf of America coast are for crude oil, not refined diesel, gasoline, kerosene or heating oil. The tanks are underground salt caves and you can only pump back out of them at a certain rate and then send the crude to the nearby refineries for processing.
There are limits on storage for refined products at the sites.
The U.S. Reserve is close to a set draw down limit on pulling reserves from it. 285 million barrels of cruse oil as of today.
When full its at a limit 714 million barrels of crude oil.
Big club or Big tent.
So accurate and George spelled that out about 30 years ago, maybe longer.
🎯
sDee, you’re welcome. 😊
So how do you get the prices down? It better happen soon as this could drag our chances down in the mid-terms.
So close all commodity markets. Make it illegal.
lol, are you wanting to collapse the commodity markets or just being facetious?
Sounds drastic. Then you go with government price controls?
Instead, we should limit commodity trading to those that actually produce or use the product. Kick out the speculators and the City of London.
Imho, it is not so much the “Commodity market”, in and of itself, as it is the regulations written to benefit those who would manipulate said market.
…
“Evil lurks in the datalinks as it lurked in the streets of yesteryear. But it was never the streets that were evil.”
Sister Miriam Godwinson
Sid Meier’s
“Alpha Centauri”
…
“2. The shift to cash settlement
Originally, futures contracts resulted in the physical delivery of the commodity. This changed in the 1970s with the introduction of cash settlement.
Rather than delivering the physical goods, cash is exchanged based on the price difference between the futures contract price and the market price at expiration. This allows participation from speculators and investors.”
https://www.markets.com/education-centre/commodity-markets
…
17 CFR Appendix C to Part 38 – Demonstration of Compliance That a Contract Is Not Readily Susceptible to Manipulation
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/17/appendix-C_to_part_38
Unless there is full collusion among the traders in the market, it seems like a market-based price would always be the lowest. If the game is that rigged, to whom is all the excess money going and why hasn’t anybody reported on the massive scam being perpetrated on the citizens? And how is Maganomics going to change the system? More background and explanation please.
I understand that folks what to believe what they want to believe because they can’t accept reality. But, you can’t blame that your tires are flat on your vehicle because someone stuck a knife in them, when you’re neighbor’s surveillance system clearly shows you puncturing your own tires.
Sorry, if I traded markets based on opinions, instead of making $$$ everyday, I’d be liquidating my assets and end up living on the streets.
Nope. The City of London speculators and insurers (Lloyds) control the price. The actual true price of oil is what Russia charges to India – based on production and shipping costs. As Sundance points out, global commodity trading is why orange juice costs the same in Minneapolis as it does in Florida. Collusion? You bet.
Consumer free market pricing works for the most part. If the price of orange juice becomes too high then people stop buying it.
Diesel is different though because it is used to transport products and has a force multiplier on pricing in a way. Your orange juice is going up because of diesel prices. Everything we consume in the US abd the world for that matter relies on diesel fueled transportation at some point.
Well if all or the vast majority of traders hate Trump or love globalism (not that far fetched) it’s not hard to see how they can control the prices. Virtually full collusion. The media hates Trump, so they aren’t going to expose anything.
The profits (“excess money”) is making a very small class of Wall Street types very rich. Why would they stop?
You’d need a Conservative, patriotic group of investors to build a refinery and a distribution network large enough to cause enough competition (lost sales) to bring down prices and be willing to do that for minimum profit.
And it would take years and Democrats would do their best to block permitting and approvals.
We are a divided nation. They hate us.
Insert Brussels, City of London, Davos and the Rules Based Order.
Just a piss hole in the snow.
Ah yes, the classic George Carlin explanation of the US government and the “free” market system.
Carlin was aware of the corporatism or the rise of corporate fascism well before most.
Old enough to remember when lots of “conservative GOP” bloggers would call you out if you rightly placed blame of events on Wall Street or mega corporations.
Just not ready to have “Gov’t” dictate the price of anything, especially oil. The distortions on the supply side are already caused by Gov’t (war, sanctions, regulations that prevent pipelines and refineries and storage tanks from being built, etc).
Look at Pharma as another place where Gov’t effs up pricing by being too involved.
Were such machinations with gas/diesel prices happening under Biden? I only ask bc I remember the Dems making the claim of price gouging. This seems like a similar claim. To be clear, I understand they are different claims (not trying to claim Sundance is a Dem haha) just trying to
Understand why this is different, why Biden was culpable, why Trump isn’t, etc
I will repeat: George Carlin was wrong!!!
The number of people in the club is in fact extremely tiny!
The people in the club, however, do believe that they are “big.”
But even so, they are morally and spiritually at Zero!
Increasingly markets look like a casino, where the house has rigged all the wheels and marked all the cards in the casino’s favor.
“Free markets” in the Adam-Smith sense seem to be a rarity.
Free markets like many things in US history were based on a honest society. A man’s word was his bond.
Honor hardly exists anymore. Society is now get what you can while you can in any way.
I thought these multinational commodity firms like ADM, Cargill, Bunge, and Louis Dreyfus had market power and could influence prices, but ultimately were constrained by supply and demand. They buy and sell to maximize profit of course, which means they respond to, rather than dictate, market prices.
This post by Sundance in a previous thread should be taken into account here.
sundance (@sundance)
September 23, 2026 1:24 pm
Reply to L4Grasshopper.
“You first have to stop or erase your historic contexts and start over. It’s not an individual trader issue. AI now has algorithmic bots to act as thousands of traders simultaneously speculating. Those thousands are actually one person.“