ASEAN states have a long history of fuel subsidization policies and are now undertaking substantial reforms. The lower crude oil price helps a country’s low-income group to gain access to modern forms of energy, thereby enabling ASEAN governments to implement mandatory policy reforms. However, most fuel-subsidized ASEAN emerging economies are still struggling to find long-term solutions. This paper aims to contribute to the debate on fuel subsidization policy in the South-East Asian economies. Applying the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model using quarterly data range from 1992Q1 to 2018Q4, we find that removing fuel subsidization can affect the overall household consumption, GDP and oil prices in ASEAN nations. This research emphasizes that this impact can be substantial and affects people at different income levels. Decisions of ASEAN governments to abolish fuel subsidies in this region can significantly affect and alter its citizens’ living standard as well as national income measures such as GDP in both the short and long run. These findings provide evidence that when developing the energy pricing in these countries, governments must ensure that the policy is equitable and sustainable.