Russia will send its first tanker of diesel to the United States on Thursday, October 22, carrying 40,000 metric tons of fuel, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Wednesday. Reuters reported his remarks, citing the Russian outlets Vedomosti and RIA. The cargo is the first delivery under the deal President Donald Trump announced after a call with Vladimir Putin on October 9.
The shipment matters to anyone paying for diesel in the US, where the average retail price is above $6 a gallon two weeks before the midterm elections. But the first cargo is tiny next to US demand. It works out to less than two hours of the country’s distillate fuel use, by our calculation from federal data.
Novak named a date but not a port
Novak did not say which Russian port the tanker would leave from or where in the US it would unload. “Additional shipments will follow, of course. There were agreements reached between the two leaders,” he said, as quoted by RIA and reported by Al Jazeera from Reuters. He added that Russia would meet US needs “to the extent of our capabilities.”
The same day, Putin hosted Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg. Witkoff thanked him for lifting Russia’s export restrictions. Putin said global diesel prices fell 5% to 6% after the agreement and that the first tankers would leave in two to three days, according to Reuters. He also said Russia could sell fertilizer to the US “in large quantities.” Putin offered no data for the price claim.
Putin also said “the financial component should be provided,” which suggests payment terms were still being settled. Neither government has named the US buyers or the price.
Washington cleared the trade on October 9
The US side moved first. On October 9, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued General License 135. It authorizes transactions tied to the “sale, delivery, offloading, or importation” of Russian-origin diesel, including into the US, through April 7, 2027. It bars any debit to US accounts of Russia’s central bank, its National Wealth Fund or its Ministry of Finance.
The license covers diesel only. Crude oil, gasoline and the rest of the Russia sanctions program stay in place. It also leaves UK and EU bans on shipping Russian diesel untouched, law firm Clyde & Co noted. The firm warned the license could face a legal challenge, because the 2022 Ending Importation of Russian Oil Act sets conditions for lifting the import ban that include consulting Congress.
Trump said Russia would export 300,000 metric tons right away, 500,000 tons in November and 1 million tons “immediately thereafter,” The Associated Press reported. Moscow had banned diesel exports in July after Ukrainian drone strikes hit its refineries. On October 10, the Russian government cleared 500,000 tons for export, The Kyiv Independent reported, citing TASS. Ukraine’s defense ministry says the strikes knocked out at least half of Russia’s refining capacity, Reuters reported.
One cargo covers under two hours of US demand
Reuters converts Trump’s 300,000 tons into 2.25 million barrels. At that rate, Thursday’s 40,000-ton cargo is roughly 300,000 barrels.
The Energy Information Administration counts US demand as “product supplied” of distillate fuel, a category that is mostly diesel. That figure averaged about 3.85 million barrels a day over the six weeks to October 9. So the first cargo equals about 1.9 hours of US consumption.
The full schedule Trump described adds up to 1.8 million tons, or about 13.5 million barrels. That is three and a half days of US demand, spread over several months.
The US is also a large diesel exporter. EIA data show distillate exports averaged about 1.5 million barrels a day over the same six weeks. American refiners ship out a cargo this size roughly every five hours.
The US does still import some distillate, between 85,000 and 185,000 barrels a day in September, EIA data show. Russian cargoes would compete in that import trade. They are too small to change the national balance on their own.
US pump prices haven’t tracked Putin’s figure
The EIA’s weekly survey put the average US retail diesel price at $6.276 a gallon on October 19. That compares with $6.199 on October 5, the last reading before the deal, and $3.620 a year earlier. Prices peaked at $6.529 on September 21, before the deal, and had already started easing.
So US retail diesel has risen slightly since the agreement, not fallen, whatever happened to global benchmarks. The AAA average was $6.31 on Wednesday, Al Jazeera reported, down from $6.51 a month earlier.
High fuel costs already have Washington spending money. The Agriculture Department is sending farmers $8 billion in diesel relief payments tied to planted acres. Fuel prices are also a live issue in the November 3 midterm elections.
Lawmakers in both parties want the license cancelled
Six senators urged the administration to “immediately reverse course,” the AP reported on October 11. They were Republicans Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Thom Tillis and John Curtis, and Democrats Jeanne Shaheen and Richard Blumenthal. “The United States should not provide Putin with a financial lifeline while Russia continues to kill Ukrainian civilians,” their statement said.
On October 16, House Democrats and Republican Rep. Don Bacon introduced a bill to void OFAC’s diesel licenses and bar new ones, Bloomberg Government reported. Congress is out until after the election, and Trump could veto the measure.
Energy deals with sanctioned producers have become a tool of Trump’s foreign policy, as with Chevron’s expanding role in Venezuela. In St Petersburg, Witkoff told Putin that work toward a ceasefire in Ukraine was underway, Ukrainska Pravda reported, citing Russian agencies.
The next marker is Thursday’s departure and the tanker’s US port of arrival. After that comes the 500,000-ton November tranche, and OFAC’s license expires on April 7, 2027.
