Infrastructure: The White House is reportedly considering a 90-day US diesel export ban to ease record prices ahead of the midterms, a measure that could disrupt oil markets without materially lowering domestic prices.
New Product: The new NGL Hub Model is now live in Energy Data Studio, adding more granularity across the visuals.
Exports: US NGL exports fell 17.0% W-o-W for the week ending Sept. 25, driven by an 11.4% decline in LPG exports and a 34.5% drop in ethane exports.
Infrastructure:
The White House is reportedly mulling a 90-day ban on US diesel exports in an effort to bring down record diesel prices ahead of the midterms. The policy proposal, while disruptive to oil markets, would also likely fail on the merits to bring down refined product prices.
The logic of a ban is simple: Keep more diesel at home, and prices should fall. But US refiners and international buyers have spent years building export-based supply chains. Restricting those flows would create two problems: excess diesel supply on the US Gulf Coast, and tighter supply across some of the largest US diesel markets in Latin America.
US distillate exports averaged roughly 1.56 MMb/d over the four weeks ending Sept. 18, equivalent to 30% of US distillate production. Roughly 90% of export barrels leave from the Gulf Coast.
East Daley’s analysis of Vortexa vessel data shows South America accounted for ~128 Mb/d, or 41%, of tracked US diesel exports YTD in 2026. Add Central America and Mexico, and the exposure rises to ~216 Mb/d, or 68% of tracked volumes. Ecuador stands out as the largest destination in the dataset at roughly 56 Mb/d, followed by Chile at 29 Mb/d and Honduras at 24 Mb/d.
A US export restriction would force these buyers to compete for replacement barrels from Europe, the Middle East and other suppliers. The result would likely be a geographic disconnect: lower diesel prices on the US Gulf Coast, but higher prices in markets that depend on US supply.
Diesel Ban Leads to Higher Prices
For US refiners, the first response to a ban would be optimization. Refiners can shift yields away from diesel and toward gasoline, jet fuel and naphtha, but that flexibility has limits. If exports remain restricted, diesel inventories would build, Gulf Coast diesel cracks would weaken, and physical constraints eventually force refiners to reduce crude runs.
Here is where the impacts expand beyond diesel, and in counterproductive ways. Lower refinery utilization means less production of gasoline, jet fuel and naphtha. Restricting the diesel trade would lower supplies of other refined products, thereby supporting higher prices at the pump and for airline travel.
Internationally, a US export ban would increase global diesel prices, and likely drag up international crude benchmarks like Brent as well. Since the US oil market is otherwise connected globally, WTI is likely to rise in sympathy with higher international prices.
For naphtha, volumes could initially increase as a percentage of refinery yield as refiners optimize away from middle distillates, but production would eventually decline as less crude is processed. Stronger diesel cracks would incentivize refiners to maximize middle distillate production, potentially reducing naphtha yields. The longer an export restriction lasts, the greater the risk of tightening naphtha supply both domestically and internationally.
The disruption would also move downstream into Gulf Coast export infrastructure. East Daley’s Vortexa data shows some of the largest diesel export volumes moving through terminals associated with Phillips 66 (PSX), Chevron (CVX), ONEOK (OKE), Marathon (MPC), MPLX and ExxonMobil (XOM). The largest locations include PSX’s Clifton Ridge at roughly 34 Mb/d YTD, Chevron Pascagoula at 24 Mb/d, and Galena Park at 22 Mb/d.
These facilities would face direct downside risk to marine throughput under a full export ban, although the magnitude depends heavily on policy design. A partial restriction or exemptions for major regional buyers would materially reduce the barrels at risk.
The biggest question is how long refiners can absorb the stranded products before a diesel export policy becomes a refinery utilization problem. In that scenario, terminal volumes would fall and supplies of other products across the barrel would tighten
New Product:
The new NGL Hub Model is now live in Energy Data Studio, adding more granularity across the underlying data and visuals. Key upgrades include monthly data, new Bakken and Powder River basin corridors, and asset-level fractionator views in Mont Belvieu, providing a more complete view of NGL flows and infrastructure across the Lower 48.
Exports:
US NGL exports fell 17.0% W-o-W for the week ending Sept. 25, driven by an 11.4% decline in LPG exports and a 34.5% drop in ethane exports.
LPG exports were supported by stronger volumes at Enterprise’s Neches River (+43.5%) and Targa’s Galena Park (+35.1%), though weakness at other terminals pulled total LPG exports down 11.4% W-o-W.
On the ethane side, Neches River exports jumped 141.7% W-o-W, but declines at the remaining terminals more than offset the increase, resulting in a 34.5% drop in total ethane exports.
