U.S. pressures European allies to release diesel reserves as Trump considers export ban

The Trump administration ramped up a pressure campaign Thursday to convince European allies to release diesel from national emergency stockpiles. The White House says additional diesel from Europe would increase global supplies and potentially keep a lid on soaring prices.

The average U.S. price of diesel has soared by 70% since the war with Iran began, hitting $6.38 per gallon Thursday, according to AAA.

Less than five weeks before the U.S. midterm elections, Republicans are eager for any way to lower domestic fuel prices.

“Our European partners should accelerate delivery on their existing commitments and make additional supplies immediately available to address ongoing disruptions” to energy markets, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent posted on X Thursday. “American farmers, truckers, and businesses should not be left carrying the burden of a global diesel shortage.”

Shortly after Bessent’s post, Trump told reporters “we may” request that Europe release some of its emergency reserves.

Earlier this week, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright had appeared confident that Europe would agree to tap its reserves.

“You will hear announcements from our friends in Europe about new diesel supplies that’ll come to the market that’ll meaningfully push diesel prices down,” Wright told reporters Wednesday at an event with Trump in the Oval Office.

But as of Thursday evening, those announcements hadn’t materialized.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said he raised the diesel issue at a G20 trade ministers in Milwaukee this week. But he did not suggest that Washington had gotten any firm commitments about emergency reserves.

“We’d love to have a collaborative response” to the global diesel crunch, he told Bloomberg News Thursday.

Also in Milwaukee were trade ministers from China, India, the United Kingdom and other countries that have been impacted by strained global diesel supplies.

So far, however, the message coming from Europe on diesel reserves is a noncommittal one.

The E.U. is “in very close contact with our member states on this ongoing issue,” European Commission energy spokesperson Anna-Kaisa Itkonen told reporters at a media briefing in Brussels.

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“We are also having high-level contacts ongoing with the U.S. administration,” she said.

The majority of Europe’s emergency diesel reserves are stored in Germany and France. Both American and European oil refineries have been running at near full capacity for months, churning out as much diesel fuel as possible.

While the Iran war is responsible for the lion’s share of price increases in crude oil and unleaded gasoline around the world, the price of diesel has been outpacing both of them since July, albeit for a different reason.

Russia has traditionally been a major exporter of diesel, but that stopped this summer after Ukrainian drone strikes destroyed Russian refineries.

On July 8, Russia banned the export of diesel in order to preserve its domestic supply. On Wednesday, the Kremlin extended that ban until the end of October.

“We’re tight on diesel because we’ve lost diesel exports from Russia,” Wright said at the White House. “We’ve lost diesel, some diesel exports from the Middle East, although we’re restoring those. And we’ve lost diesel exports from China.”

“That’s a lot of interruptions,” he said.

But whether Europe will tap its emergency reserves of diesel to increase global supply is complicated by the fact that the Trump administration is actively considering a move that is effectively the opposite of what it is asking Europe to do.

On Wednesday, the president mused about imposing a ban on exports of U.S. diesel.

“I’m thinking about it,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I speak to Chris and Doug about it a lot,” he said, referring to Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

“They sort of think ... it’ll help diesel, but it might raise the price of other things,” he said.

An export ban on U.S. diesel would hit European countries particularly hard.

It would also land at a moment when average U.S. prices for unleaded gas remain almost 50% higher than they were on Feb. 28, the day the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran.