US President Donald Trump on Friday said Russia has agreed to supply millions of barrels of diesel to global markets after a call with President Vladimir Putin.
The move comes as Mr Trump faces growing domestic political pressure to bring down rising diesel prices – caused by supply constraints in the Iran war and Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries – ahead of November's midterm elections.
Mr Trump said in a social media post that under the deal, Russia will immediately supply more than 300,000 tonnes of diesel fuel to the US and global market, in addition to 500,000 tonnes in November, followed by 1 million more tonnes “immediately thereafter”. Mr Trump said, “based on the condition of their diesel refineries,” Russia will deliver 3 million tonnes of diesel fuel “within a short period of time”.
“Between our total control of the Strait of Hormuz, and this great announcement on Russian Energy, Diesel Prices for Americans and, indeed, the World, will be coming, in record numbers down, and fast!” Mr Trump wrote.
The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control released a correspondent general licence allowing the immediate “sale, delivery, offloading, or importation, including importation” of Russian origin-diesel fuel into the US through April 2027. The department said it does not authorise any debit to an account on the books of a US financial institution of Russia's central bank, its national wealth fund, or its finance ministry.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and other members of the Democratic Party expressed dismay at the announcement.
"This filthy deal will only aid and abet the same Putin who is helping the Iranians to target and try to kill American troops in the Middle East and who illegally and viciously invaded our ally Ukraine," he said on X.
Russia was the second-largest diesel exporter in the world after the US before imposing curbs to protect its domestic market. Those supplies have been further hampered by Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries, including what Kyiv claimed to be an attack on the country's largest oil refinery on Thursday.
It is unclear how Russia will supply the diesel amounts mentioned by Mr Trump.
Russia's fossil fuel export revenue fell 8 per cent on a monthly basis in August to €604 million per day, with export volumes falling 7 per cent, according to the Centre for Research on Clean Air, a think tank that has previously condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Mr Trump has recently acknowledged the diesel fuel crisis. In September, he publicly called on Mr Zelenskyy to halt its attacks on Russia's oil facilities “because he's causing a shortage of diesel fuel”.
Friday's move drew quick condemnation from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who said allowing Russia to sell its petroleum products “is an investment in war that needs to end, not continue”.
“Russia will ‘repay’ the diesel with further terror and perfidy,” Mr Zelenskyy said.
G7 member countries last week said they had agreed to release 100 million barrels of diesel and other products through the International Energy Agency to help stabilise markets following pressure from the Trump administration, which had threatened to impose a diesel export ban.
IEA members on Wednesday said they had agreed to prioritise the release of diesel stocks and accelerate the release of roughly 100 million barrels of emergency oil reserves. The IEA's members in March agreed to release 425 barrels of reserves to markets as prices surged after the Iran war broke out on February 28, with roughly 325 million barrels having been released so far.
Friday's surprise move also appears to defy a Russian sanctions law championed by the late senator Lindsey Graham, which Mr Trump signed into law on September 18. The law codifies the existing US sanctions regime targeting Russia and introduced new tariff authorities with a particular focus on energy exports.
Don Beyer, the senior Democrat on the House of Representatives Joint Economic Committee who opposed the legislation, called the deal “infuriating”.
“Giving him expanded tariff powers in hopes he would use them to help Ukraine was a mistake,” he wrote on X.
The average cost of diesel in the US on Friday was $6.27 per gallon, compared to $3.67 this time last year.
