Is the US about to ban diesel exports, and what would it mean for UK pump prices?

What is being shared

Update, 5 October 2026: the headline has moved on. “Trump demands Europe release emergency diesel reserves” (The Telegraph, 1 October) is stronger than what the President said on the record that day: speaking to reporters in Texas, he said the United States may ask Europe to release its diesel reserves (NBC News and AFP, 1 October). The public call came from his Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, in a post the same day; Reuters, citing unnamed sources, reported a US request for 120 million barrels over six months. The next day the G7 agreed a release, and Trump said a US export ban was “never really on the table”; the details are below.

The earlier headline was “European diesel prices surge as Trump mulls 90-day US export ban” (The Telegraph, 23 September 2026). The Telegraph had run “Trump considers diesel export ban in threat to UK” on 22 September, and the BBC’s version that evening read “Trump says he would back ban on diesel exports as pump prices hit record” (BBC News, 22 September 2026, as indexed by Google News). On the morning of 23 September London Loves Business ran “Trump threatens diesel export ban as UK prices rocket”; Bloomberg then ran “Trump’s Fuel Export Ban Threat Sends European Diesel Soaring” and, hours later, “US Prepares Plan for 90-Day Diesel Export Ban, Politico Reports”. The Telegraph’s “…mulls 90-day US export ban” followed that evening. The same day the RAC warned “Record diesel price looms”, citing concerns over global wholesale supply rather than anything said in Washington.

The record in the BBC’s headline is the American one: US diesel passed $6.50 a gallon on 22 September, according to American Automobile Association data reported by the BBC. The UK average was 1.78p short of its own record on 23 September (RAC). Two things are being welded together: a real rise at British pumps, under way since February, and a US policy that Republican lawmakers had been urging in the days before the President backed it on 22 September and that, as of the morning of 24 September, has not been decided. Here is what was said, and what it means at a British pump.

What was actually said, and when

Update, 5 October: stocks released, and no ban. On the afternoon of 2 October the G7 leaders agreed a coordinated release of 100 million barrels from emergency stocks through the International Energy Agency over four months, with “a frontloaded substantial diesel release” by G7 members and partners in the first 20 days, and reaffirmed their commitment to refrain from energy export restrictions between G7 countries (G7 leaders’ statement, GOV.UK). The statement frames the 100 million barrels as carrying out the commitments made in March 2026, and does not say how much of it is diesel. The Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband, represented the UK, standing in for the Prime Minister (PA news agency). The same day Trump posted that Europe had agreed to release a large amount of diesel, and later told reporters that a US export ban was “never really on the table” (CBS News), which does not square with what he said on 22 September (“I called for that too”), 27 September (looking at it “very seriously”, Bloomberg) and 30 September (“I’m thinking about it”, NBC News). No export ban, order or written decision exists. We have found no UK volume published; the UK contributed 13.5 million barrels to the IEA’s release in March. The G7 says it will meet in the coming days to discuss the possibility of additional diesel releases, and it has asked the IEA for a follow-up report within 20 days.

Update, 9 October: we have found no new US statement on diesel exports since the President’s remarks of 2 October. On 5 October he signed an order deferring, until the end of the year, federal tax on dyed diesel (the untaxed fuel normally kept for off-road use) when it is used on roads; as reported, it deals with tax on fuel used in the US and does not address exports (Euronews, 6 October). On 7 October IEA member governments backed speeding up the stock releases and putting diesel first where possible. The IEA says about 325 million barrels have been released so far under its March plan and that releasing everything still pledged under it would bring about 100 million barrels to market, which suggests the G7’s 100 million barrels is largely the unreleased part of that plan. Its members still hold about 1.1 billion barrels of public emergency stocks, over 200 million of them diesel, and it says it stands ready to release more if needed; its Governing Board was due to review the situation in the week of 12 October (IEA, 7 October).

Update, 2 October: still no US ban. On 1 October the US Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, wrote that European partners should “make additional supplies immediately available” (as quoted by AFP), and Reuters, citing unnamed sources, reported that the US had told France and Germany to release emergency stocks or face a possible export ban; there is no on-record US confirmation of that. On 1 October the UK joined a call with the European Commission and several European governments about the possible need to release emergency diesel stocks (Reuters, citing EU officials); the energy minister Martin McCluskey represented the UK, according to The Independent and to City AM, citing a person familiar with the call. Nothing was decided on the call, and EU officials met again on 2 October; no decision had been reported by the middle of that day. In Britain, the transport minister Keir Mather said on Sky News on 2 October that people shouldn’t be concerned about shortages (PA news agency).

Update, 30 September: still no decision. Speaking in Dublin on 29 September, Ireland’s energy minister, Darragh O’Brien, whose country holds the EU presidency, said that from what he had heard in Washington the week before a US ban did not look like something that would happen, and the EU’s energy commissioner, Dan Jørgensen, welcomed the US Energy Secretary’s comments against a ban (Politico Europe). In Britain the Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, told the BBC’s Today programme on 30 September that he did not think it an overstatement to say the country was in an energy crisis that could last for months, and that its main cause was beyond the UK’s control (PA news agency). As of the afternoon of 30 September no US ban had been imposed, ordered or dated.

Update, 29 September: the UK government is talking to Washington about the possible ban. The Chancellor, John Healey, told BBC News at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, in an interview published on 28 September, that the government was in discussions with the US, adding: “We’re also making the provision that we may need to and we have our own stocks in the UK.” He described UK diesel prices as “extreme”. Bloomberg reported the same day that the UK was lobbying the US to exempt it from any ban. On the US side, a White House official told Yahoo Finance on 28 September: “No policy decision has been made at this time.” The official said the President “is evaluating all the options on the table”. The Times reported on the evening of 28 September that the Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, is to lobby President Trump on diesel exports. Its report is behind a paywall, and we have not been able to confirm when he will raise it, or whether by phone or in person. Burnham told LBC the same day that he had “discussed the Middle East situation in detail” with the President and, asked whether the UK would seek a deal if a ban were imposed, said: “Always,” adding: “we do make that case all of the time.” Downing Street’s account of their meeting at the UN on 22 September, the latest it has published, mentions the Strait of Hormuz and the cost of living but not diesel. On 29 September Reuters reported, citing two sources, that the White House had urged the European Union to draw down emergency diesel stocks, and that the administration was considering measures “ranging from encouraging foreign stockpile releases to restricting U.S. diesel exports and working with refiners to increase domestic supplies”. For drivers, nothing changes at the pump as a result: as of the evening of 29 September no US ban had been imposed, ordered or dated, and the advice below still applies. The latest official figures on UK oil stocks are further down this page.

A growing number of Republican lawmakers had called in recent days for a short-term ban on diesel exports. Speaking to reporters at his meeting with Ukraine’s president on Tuesday 22 September, Donald Trump said, “I called for that too,” and “I’ve said, ‘let’s not send out the diesel’.” His Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, put it more narrowly: “We’re examining that, whether it’s feasible in terms of the overall refining capacity and whether a full or a partial ban would work” (Argus Media, 22 September 2026).

On Wednesday 23 September Politico reported, citing five people familiar with the discussions, that the White House was preparing a plan for a 90-day ban and that the legal process for imposing one was still being worked out (The Hill, 23 September 2026). Politico also reported that the President was inclined to put a ban forward by the end of that week (as summarised by Bloomberg, 23 September). Within hours the White House told The Hill, in an unsigned statement: “This is not true.”

The same day the US Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, said in New York that the administration did not plan a “blanket ban” and that any change was “more likely to be done entirely voluntary”: “We will not cease exports of US diesel. But may there be some tweak in where diesel flows out of US refineries? Yeah, I think we’re going to see that” (Argus Media, 23 September 2026). Where that leaves things, as of the morning of 24 September: a President who favours a ban, a Treasury studying one, a plan reported and denied within hours, and an Energy Secretary who has ruled out a full stop. Nothing had been decided, signed or scheduled at the time of writing, and a decision could come within days.

Later on 23 September Wright told The New York Times that “nobody wants a full blanket ban or zero exports of diesel” and “that’s not being discussed”. The same day the US Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Petroleum Institute and dozens of other groups wrote to the President that a ban would “lead to less fuel production, tighter supplies and rising costs for American families, farmers and truckers” (CNBC, 24 September 2026). By the evening of 24 September, UK time, we had found no announcement of a ban, an order or a date.

On 24 September the European Commission joined in. Its spokesman, Olof Gill, said a US ban was “a bad idea” that “potentially can have a negative impact on both sides”, adding: “We expect close partners to consult each other before taking measures that affect shared markets.” The United States supplied about half of the EU’s diesel imports in August (Euronews, 24 September 2026). As of the evening of 25 September we had still found no announcement of a ban, an order or a date.

The market move is real, and older than the headlines

The European reaction was immediate. On 23 September the premium of European diesel over Brent crude, which traders call the crack spread, reached a record of about $95 a barrel (Reuters, 23 September 2026); Bloomberg put it at more than $95, the highest in its data going back to 2011. That is the “surge” in the headline: a wholesale market figure, not a pump price.

It did not start with the export-ban talk. Argus Media, the price-reporting agency, recorded European diesel cracks at records at the end of July, topping $90 a barrel on 29 July, and put the tightness down to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and Russia’s ban on diesel exports (Argus Media, 31 July 2026). The US talk landed on a market already stretched, which is why a few words from Washington moved it so far. Our guide to why diesel is so expensive covers the refining squeeze behind it.

Bloomberg describes the United States as Europe’s main overseas supplier of diesel (23 September 2026); the US Energy Information Administration’s weekly series shows US distillate exports at 1,935,000 barrels a day in the week ending 7 August 2026, the highest on record, 1,331,000 barrels a day in the week ending 18 September, 1,529,000 in the week ending 25 September and 1,764,000 in the week ending 2 October, up on the week before and below the early-August record (EIA, Weekly U.S. Exports of Total Distillate, published 7 October; the next figures are due on 15 October).

The market moved before any barrel did. On 2 October, as the release was agreed, European diesel futures fell by 8%, to $1,337.75 a tonne, the lowest since early September (The Irish Times). That is a wholesale price, not a pump price.

How much of Britain’s diesel comes from America

The government’s figures are worth reading precisely. In 2025 just under 40% of the UK’s petroleum product imports were diesel, and of those diesel imports the United States supplied 31%, the Netherlands 26% and Belgium 11% (DESNZ, Digest of UK Energy Statistics 2026, Chapter 3, published 30 July 2026). Across all oil products the US share is 15%, behind the Netherlands at almost a quarter; the 31% is the figure that matters here.

How much that exposes the country depends on how much diesel is imported at all: “about 55 per cent” of road diesel, according to Elizabeth de Jong, chief executive of Fuels Industry UK (quoted in The Telegraph, 22 September 2026). Put the two together and roughly one litre in six of Britain’s diesel arrives from the United States, though the two figures measure slightly different things.

Two things follow. A real US ban would matter to Britain. And a ban is not the same as no diesel: the Netherlands, which DESNZ describes as the UK’s closest major oil refining and trading hub, and Belgium together supplied 37% of diesel imports in 2025, and we would expect other suppliers to fill most of any gap, so the effect would most likely reach households as a higher price rather than an empty pump. That is our judgement, not a published forecast; Bloomberg’s own headline on 23 September was that the ban push “Would Threaten Fuel Supply in UK, Brazil”. On stocks, the UK’s oil holdings exceeded the International Energy Agency’s 90-day requirement at the end of 2025 (DESNZ, DUKES 2026). It took part in a co-ordinated release in March 2026 in response to the US–Iran conflict. At the end of July 2026 the UK held 9.6 million tonnes of oil stocks, 10.3% less than a year earlier, mostly because less was held abroad after that release; stocks held in the UK were 1.6% lower. The International Energy Agency’s figures, as reported by DESNZ, put the UK at 117 days of net imports in June, against the 90-day requirement. Stocks of white (road) diesel were 13% lower than a year earlier (provisional), though DESNZ says the UK “remains well-supplied for all oil types from a diverse range of sources” (DESNZ, Energy Trends Table 3.11, published 29 September 2026).

What it means at the pump

Update, 9 October: only a small fall at the pump so far. The RAC said on 9 October that its UK average for diesel had dipped back below £2 a litre, to 199.90p (RAC press release); its table had shown 200.20p on 5 October, the highest figure it has published, and 200.01p on 8 October. Its forecast column has read “Should fall” for diesel since 11:26 GMT on 6 October; it read “No change forecast” from the afternoon of 2 October, and “Likely to rise” in every version from 23 September to the morning of 2 October (RAC Fuel Watch). The government’s weekly statistic was 199.52p for 5 October, above its previous high of 199.22p (4 July 2022). Our fuel price tracker, which reads the Fuel Finder feed, had diesel at 199.9p in the early hours of 9 October. Before the deal was final, Wood Mackenzie estimated that a major diesel release could cut wholesale prices by $20 to $30 a barrel, about 10 to 15 euro cents a litre at the pump, and said motorists could see prices fall within a few days; Kpler said significant market moves typically take one to two weeks to reach the pump (Yahoo Finance UK, 2 October). The CMA’s finding, below, that some retailers were slow to pass on falls is why we would not count on it arriving quickly.

Update, 2 October: the record has gone, and diesel was over £2 a litre on the RAC’s table, on the Fuel Finder data and on our tracker; the government’s weekly statistic, 197.58p for 28 September, was lower. The RAC’s UK average for diesel, published on the morning of 28 September, was 199.18p a litre, above the all-time high of 199.09p set on 25 June 2022; it had been 199.05p the day before (RAC Fuel Watch). The RAC’s diesel average has kept rising since, to 199.72p on 30 September and 200.01p on 2 October, the first time it has passed £2. Petrol, at 174.71p on 2 October, was well below its own record of 191.5p. On the government’s Fuel Finder data the UK average passed £2 a litre on the morning of 30 September, according to the RAC Foundation, a transport research charity that is separate from the RAC’s Fuel Watch table and analyses that data; our tracker, which averages the same feed by its own method, read 200.0p on 30 September, as it had late on 29 September, with 33.7% of the 7,556 forecourts reporting diesel charging £2 or more (27.5% on 27 September).

The UK price was close to its record before the export story. RAC Fuel Watch put the average litre of diesel at 197.31p on 23 September, 1.78p below the all-time high of 199.09p set on 25 June 2022, and 54.9p higher than on 28 February. Simon Williams, the RAC’s head of policy, said the question “is no longer ‘when will the average price exceed 199.09p?’ but ‘how far above £2 a litre will it climb?’” (RAC, 23 September 2026). It was an expectation then; the first half happened on 28 September, and on 2 October the RAC’s average passed £2.

Our own fuel price tracker, which reads the statutory Fuel Finder feed, had diesel averaging 198.9p a litre across 7,756 forecourts on 25 September, with 23.8% of them already charging £2 or more, up from 15.6% the day before; the middle forecourt was at 199.7p. Our longer-running series of retailers’ price files, which we use for like-for-like change, was at 199.2p, up 2.7p in seven days and the highest since that series began on 20 July. The page updates continuously, so the figures will have moved by the time you read this.

The CMA’s monitoring explains why a wholesale move reaches you. It found that diesel rose 49.8p a litre between the end of February and the week of 20 April 2026, from 141.5p to 191.2p, that “increases in wholesale costs are the main driver of the rapid rise in the fuel prices”, and that, on average, large retailers’ margins were broadly unchanged between February and March and close to the 2025 average, though at historically high levels, with increases at a minority of retailers (CMA, 1 May 2026). In August it added that “some retailers did not immediately pass reductions in wholesale diesel prices on to drivers” (CMA, 18 August 2026). In plain terms: the record crack spread of late September is likely to be felt at the pump, and relief when it eases can arrive more slowly, at least from some retailers. The CMA has not yet published how long either takes; it says it will assess “whether wholesale price changes are reflected in retail prices in a timely manner” in its autumn report.

What to do, and what not to do

Keep buying fuel as you normally would. We have seen no sign of shortages at UK forecourts, and nothing in the US story had changed physical supply as of 9 October. In September 2021 the Business Secretary said there had “always been and continues to be plenty of fuel at refineries and terminals”, and ten fuel companies and trade bodies said jointly that the issues were “due to temporary spikes in customer demand, not a national shortage of fuel” (BEIS, 26 September 2021). Our guide to fuel shortages sets out why joining a queue makes things worse. The rationing and 50mph headlines of 27–28 September are checked in our diesel rationing check: the rationing measures in the government’s emergency plan are reserved for a severe national shortage and have not been activated, and the plan’s published summary includes no speed limit.

Do not run the tank down to the warning light as a habit; above a quarter, a brief local disruption is unlikely to strand you or force you into a queue. Do not fill cans to hoard fuel: it is a fire risk. If you store more than 30 litres of petrol at home, you should notify your local Petroleum Enforcement Authority in writing (HSE, If you store petrol at home, or at a club/association or similar premises); that 30-litre rule is for petrol, not diesel, and our fuel shortages guide covers the law. Do shop around: on 24 September our tracker showed supermarket diesel around 4p a litre cheaper than other off-motorway sites, motorway diesel about 15p dearer, and Northern Ireland roughly 5p below the UK average. The postcode lookup lists the cheapest forecourts within ten miles.

What would change this verdict

The verdict is dated 9 October 2026 and rests on three facts: the price rise is documented; no US export ban has been ordered, and on 2 October the President said one was “never really on the table”; and the G7, the UK included, has agreed to release emergency stocks, with a substantial diesel release front-loaded, and reaffirmed its commitment not to restrict energy exports between its members. It would change if the White House ordered any restriction on diesel exports, full, partial or “voluntary” in a form that measurably cuts cargoes to Europe; we would update this page on the day and report what the EIA’s weekly export figures show afterwards. It would also change if the wholesale fall reached UK pumps. Checked on 24 and 28 September and on 2, 5 and 9 October.