Trump announces deal for immediate supply of more than 300,000 tonnes of Russian diesel
Key Facts
U.S. President Donald Trump announced on October 9, 2026, a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin under which Russia pledged to immediately supply more than 300,000 tonnes of diesel to U.S. and global markets, according to The National. The announcement includes further fuel shipments, with a later phase dependent on the condition of Russian refineries, S&P Global Energy quoted Trump as saying. The move came as the president and the Republican Party faced voter concerns over rising diesel and gasoline prices, according to The Wall Street Journal. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned allowing Russia to sell its petroleum products, objecting to the U.S. decision. Zelensky described the permission as "an investment in a war that must end, not continue," according to The National.
The average U.S. diesel price stood at $6.27 per gallon on the day of the announcement, according to The National, as Trump sought to increase supplies available to the U.S. market. That compares with an average of $3.67 per gallon in the same period a year earlier, according to the newspaper's annual comparison. The agreement is with a country that ranked as the world's second-largest diesel exporter, after the United States, before imposing restrictions on its exports. Russia had imposed those restrictions to protect its domestic market, according to the newspaper, leaving Russian fuel exports also subject to domestic supply considerations. The announced supply plan thus combines a Russian pledge to direct shipments to U.S. and global markets with a history of restricting exports to meet Russian market needs.
On the U.S. side, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control issued Russia General License No. 135 to facilitate transactions involving Russian diesel. According to the license, the authorization covers transactions for the sale, delivery, offloading and import of the fuel, including imports into the United States. The scope of permitted transactions thus extends from sale to delivery and offloading, with diesel's entry into the U.S. market explicitly included in the temporary license. The office retained specific financial exceptions, as the license does not permit debits to accounts held by the Russian central bank at U.S. financial institutions. The debit prohibition also covers accounts held by Russia's National Wealth Fund and Finance Ministry at those institutions, according to the official text defining the scope of permitted diesel transactions.
The U.S. announcement was preceded by action by the governments of International Energy Agency member countries to address diesel shortages, according to the agency's statement issued on October 7, 2026. The governments supported prioritizing releases of stocks of the fuel, where possible, as part of efforts to make supplies available to the market. The agency also called for the completion of stock releases previously pledged as part of the collective action in March 2026. It said completing the remaining volumes under those pledges would add about 100 million barrels to the market, according to its statement on the meeting of member governments. That action places pledged fuel stocks alongside the announced Russian supplies among measures to increase supply, with priority given to diesel in the releases supported by the governments.
In markets, U.S. diesel futures fell about 5% following the deal's announcement and traded at $4.64 per gallon, according to Reuters reporting carried by Investing.com. That coincided with a decline in the spread between low-sulfur diesel futures and West Texas Intermediate crude during the same session as the announcement, according to S&P Global Energy. At 19:33 GMT, the spread was down $6.45 per barrel from its level earlier that day before the decline. The spread reached $96.80 per barrel at that time, according to the firm's monitoring of the futures market. The fall in futures and the narrowing spread followed the pledge of additional Russian supplies, while Trump linked some subsequent deliveries to Russian refineries' ability to provide them.
The next scheduled delivery in Trump's plan is an additional 500,000 tonnes during November 2026, according to The National, following the volume pledged for immediate supply. The president said another million tonnes would follow the November shipment "immediately after that," in a supply sequence extending beyond the initial announced shipment. The later phase includes an additional 3 million tonnes, according to Axios, with its implementation remaining dependent on the condition of Russian diesel refineries, according to Trump's statement. The U.S. authorization for diesel transactions, meanwhile, has a specific expiry date in the general license issued by the Office of Foreign Assets Control. The authorization expires at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on April 7, 2027, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.