Aug 10 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump has extended for 90 days a waiver allowing foreign-flagged ships to transport oil and other commodities between U.S. ports, but imposed new limits after shipbuilders and their allies in Congress argued the policy was undermining the domestic maritime industry, the White House said.
The extension, finalized on Monday, comes as the war with Iran disrupts global crude flows and pushes up fuel costs, increasing pressure on the administration to find ways to ease transportation bottlenecks and keep gasoline and other energy prices from rising further.
The 90-day extension ensures the U.S. military and key industries maintain uninterrupted access to critical resources, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said on Monday.
"Data shows the waiver has driven a significant increase in domestic deliveries of essential products such as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel," Rogers said in a post on the social media platform X.
Under the new terms, the administration has narrowed the scope of the relief, requiring individual voyages to undergo case-by-case review rather than allowing foreign ships to receive blanket exemptions from the Jones Act, a White House official confirmed.
The Jones Act requires cargo moving between U.S. ports to be carried on ships built in the U.S., owned by U.S. companies and crewed by American workers, and the waiver aims to lower gas prices by increasing shipping flexibility and reducing transport bottlenecks.
The waiver was set to expire on August 16 without the extension. It is the longest suspension of the more than a century-old law in its history.
Targeted Jones Act waivers provide critical flexibility to move American energy efficiently between U.S. ports and deliver fuels to consumers at a time of ongoing global market volatility, industry trade group The American Petroleum Institute (API) said.
"This decisive step will ensure critical fuels reach the regions that need them most while reinforcing America’s resilience amid ongoing global market disruptions,” Senior Vice President of Government Relations Kristin Whitman, adding that the waiver would strengthen supply security and help protect consumers from unnecessary price volatility.
While the Jones Act waiver increases the availability of tankers to move fuel, it would likely only reduce gasoline prices by pennies per gallon, some analysts and industry experts have said.
About 208 exemptions to the Jones Act were granted in about 4-1/2 months through August 3, U.S. government data showed.
Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw, and Arathy Somasekhar in Houston, editing by Michelle Nichols, Deepa Babington and Nick Zieminski
