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A case for a national diesel reserve The administration has spent the last two weeks floating a ban on diesel exports while also asking European countries to release diesel from their emergency stocks to help bring prices down. I would note that this is what policy looks like when there are very few options available, because the United States does not have a national diesel reserve to draw on. An export ban was always going to be difficult to justify. The US exports roughly 1.5 million b/d of diesel according to S&P Global, and if those barrels can't leave the country they end up sitting in Gulf Coast storage until refiners cut runs, which reduces gasoline production along with diesel. Energy Secretary Wright and Interior Secretary Burgum both pushed back on the idea, as did the refining industry. What the US does have is a regional reserve. The Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve holds about 1 million barrels of ultra low sulfur diesel across four terminals in New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine, according to EIA. It was created after the heating oil price spike in 2000 to protect New England households, and it was never designed to support the national market. Measured against EIA's figure of about 3.7 million b/d of US distillate demand, it covers roughly six and a half hours. That limitation is getting harder to ignore as refining capacity leaves both coasts. The Northeast has very little refining left and relies on pipeline supply from the Gulf and on imports. California lost the Phillips 66 Los Angeles refinery at the end of 2025 and Valero's Benicia refinery in April, which EIA estimated would remove about 17% of the state's capacity, and EIA now has California diesel at $8.18 a gallon. California has no reserve of its own, and the Northeast reserve would not last long in a serious winter supply disruption. Building a national diesel reserve would give the US a tool of its own the next time prices spike. Sites on both coasts, sized to the time it takes replacement cargoes to arrive and funded by exchanging SPR crude for diesel, would go a long way toward closing the gap. The idea has been discussed before, and the current market makes a stronger case for it than at any point in recent years.
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