By Simon August
A tanker of Russian diesel is headed for New York, the first U.S.-bound cargo under President Donald Trump’s deal with Russia.
The Malta-flagged tanker Agioi Fanendes took on 40,000 metric tons of diesel Thursday at Primorsk, a Russian port on the Baltic Sea, and is due in the U.S. Nov. 7, Reuters reported Friday, citing shipping data from the London Stock Exchange Group. Diesel averaged $6.32 a gallon nationally Friday, up from $3.63 a year earlier, according to the American Automobile Association.
“Additional diesel supply is welcome news for farmers, truckers, and families getting hammered at the pump, but one tanker isn’t going to solve our diesel supply problems,” Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in a statement.
The cargo holds almost 300,000 barrels, while Americans use about 3.6 million barrels of diesel a day, Max Pyziur, research director for refining and fuels, natural gas and electricity projects at the Energy Policy Research Foundation, said in a statement to the DCNF.
“So, in that context, a 300 KB [thousand barrel] shipment is minute and won’t swing either prices or inventories,” Pyziur said.
Trump wrote on Truth Social Oct. 9 that Russia would “immediately supply over 300,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel to the American and Global Marketplace,” with 500,000 more tons coming in November and one million tons after that.
A bipartisan group of senators, including Republican Maine Sen. Susan Collins, Republican North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis and Democratic New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, said Oct. 11 that the imports run counter to a 2022 law banning Russian energy imports.
The offices of Collins, Tillis and Shaheen did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed Friday that the first tanker sent under the agreement had left port but did not say whether it was headed for the U.S. The identities of the buyer and seller were not immediately known, Reuters reported.
“Further shipments will continue at a steady pace from here on,” Peskov said on a call with reporters.
A Treasury official said in a statement to the DCNF that “the President has made clear the strategic importance of the diesel deal to ensure maximum flexibility for the United States” and that the department “will look at options to facilitate this deal” at his request.
“America is the world’s leading oil producer, yet we’re importing diesel from Russia while domestic refining capacity faces a regulatory gauntlet that has driven refineries out of business,” Isaac said. “We should be exporting more American diesel, not relying on Russian refineries to meet our needs.”
“Fundamentally and in general, we do not have a product shortage; we have a pricing problem,” Pyziur said.
Pyziur said the world is short about 1.5 million barrels a day of diesel, mostly because Iranian attacks have damaged refineries in the Middle East and to a lesser degree, because Ukraine’s attacks have hurt Russia’s ability to make and export the fuel.
Tom Kloza, chief energy adviser at Gulf Oil, called the cargo “a trifle” in a statement to the DCNF.
Kloza wrote on X Friday that the shipment “amounts to about 15 minutes worth of needed global fuel.”
“The deal for Russian diesel imports will have little effect on diesel prices in the U.S.,” Steve Milloy, a senior policy fellow at the Energy and Environment Legal Institute who served on Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team, said in a statement to the DCNF. “The shortage is large and the imports are relatively small.”
East Coast stocks of diesel and heating oil sit at about 20 million barrels, “about 10 million below the prior 5-year average,” Pyziur said.
“States are very concerned about the purchasing power of their LIHEAP [Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program] grants as prices continue to skyrocket,” Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, said in a statement to the DCNF.
As part of the deal, Russia lifted a ban it had placed on its own diesel exports, Reuters reported.
The Treasury Department’s license allows Russian diesel into the U.S. through April 7, 2027, according to the department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak has said the country could return its diesel exports to their usual three million to 3.5 million tons a month by the end of the year, Reuters reported.
