Would reducing US fuel exports stop gas prices from spiking?

[Spider Jerusalem]

11. That's also a horrible, horrible idea

strategic reserves are for maintaining supply to key industries and transit when there are supply constraints; there are no supply constraints, and a release of strategic reserves would only provide short-term relief from high oil prices. "Speculation" as such is probably responsible for no more than 5-10% of the cost of a barrel of oil; the real underlying reasons for the run-up in costs are increased production costs (deepwater and shale oil are much more expensive to produce) and underlying demand driven largely by growth in developing countries (oil demand in China alone has more than doubled in ten years and China now uses over 10 millon barrels a day). Global demand is around 89 million barrels a day; global production, including natural gas liquids and biofuels? Also around 89 million barrels a day. There's almost no spare capacity and demand is up against the limits of available supply; result, price increases. And flooding the markets with a sudden additional short-term millions of barrels of oil might lower prices for a week, or a month, but they'd climb back up again eventually, and probably sooner rather than later.