Russia's Diesel Pledge vs. U.S. Demand: 4.8 Million Tons, 10 Days
Treasury's new diesel license runs 180 days with no tonnage, price or loading cutoff. How much fuel actually moves is decided by Russia's own export ban and by refineries Ukraine keeps hitting.
Overnight into Saturday, fire broke out at an oil-loading terminal in Rostov-on-Don that ships Russian fuel for export; an analyst for the independent Russian outlet ASTRA identified it from residents' footage as the Yug Rusi terminal. Regional authorities acknowledged a blaze amid a reported drone attack; Ukraine had not claimed it, and the Kyiv Independent could not verify the damage. The terminal has a capacity of 3.5 million metric tons a year, about the size of the biggest diesel tranche promised to the world hours earlier.
That promise rests on a short document. The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued Russia-related General License 135 on Friday, Oct. 9, authorizing the sale, delivery, offloading and importation of Russian-origin diesel, including into the United States, until 12:01 a.m. EDT on April 7, 2027. The 4.8 million tons President Donald Trump announced after a call with Vladimir Putin equal about 36 million barrels, roughly 10 days of U.S. diesel demand by Energy Information Administration data. Russia's own export ban, not U.S. sanctions, now decides how much of it flows.
Trump's Truth Social post promised more than 300,000 tons immediately, 500,000 in November, 1 million after that and, "Based on the condition of their diesel refineries," 3 million more. Washington reached for its broadest tool. The prize, in barrels, is small.
Two paragraphs, no ceiling
General License 135 authorizes a whole class of transactions at once, and its grant is one sentence.
"all transactions prohibited by the Russian Harmful Foreign Activities Sanctions Regulations, 31 CFR part 587, or the Ukraine-/Russia-Related Sanctions Regulations, 31 CFR part 589, that are related to the sale, delivery, offloading, or importation, including importation into the United States, of diesel fuel of Russian Federation origin are authorized through 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time, April 7, 2027."
General License 135, paragraph (a), Office of Foreign Assets Control
The second paragraph is the only carve-out: no debits to accounts at U.S. banks held by Russia's central bank, its National Wealth Fund or its Ministry of Finance. It names no tonnage, no price, no buyer or seller, and no date by which a cargo must be loaded. OFAC Director Bradley T. Smith signed it at 2:43 p.m. EDT.
Today, at President Trump’s direction, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is immediately issuing a temporary general license to allow the supply of Russian diesel to the global market.
Treasury Department (@USTreasury) October 9, 2026
"Temporary" is a stretch by spring standards. GL 134A, dated March 19, covered crude oil and petroleum products loaded on or before March 12 and ran to April 11, a 23-day window, and excluded Iran, North Korea and Cuba. The spring version that followed, GL 134B, covered cargo loaded by April 17 and lasted 29 days.
Some early reports described the new license as covering only cargoes already loaded; the text says no such thing. That was the design of the spring licenses. GL 135 is a 180-day channel for diesel loaded at any time.
Its sharpest phrase is "including importation into the United States." The U.S. ban on Russian oil and petroleum products rests on Executive Order 14066, and the country has not imported Russian oil or gas since 2022, according to the EIA. For diesel, that door is now open until April.
On Sept. 18, Trump signed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, H.R. 5334, which had cleared the Senate 86-11 and the House 262-159. It gives the president 30 days, to Oct. 18, to impose tariffs of up to 100% on goods from the top five importers of Russian crude oil or natural gas, plus duties of up to 500% on Russian-origin goods.
The 100% tariff clause targets buyers of Russian crude and gas, not diesel, though the 500% duty on Russian-origin goods expressly reaches petroleum products. The clash is of direction: a law built to squeeze Russia's energy revenue, followed within a month by a new revenue line for its refiners.
Nor did the law require anyone to ask Congress. According to an analysis by the law firm Akin Gump, the act maintains the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s (OFAC) existing authority to issue, extend or modify general licenses without congressional review (Section 114).
Congressional review is reserved for any formal termination
of sanctions, which a dated license is not.
Democrats called it defiance anyway. Sens. Chuck Schumer, Jeanne Shaheen and Elizabeth Warren cited a Failure to follow the law and the bipartisan will of Congress
. Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., wrote on X: Propping up Putin’s war economy is morally wrong as he uses that money to bomb cities.
The White House's answer is the discretion Congress wrote in; as the Guardian put it, The law gave Trump wide discretion to make exceptions to its provisions.
Can 36 million barrels move a $6 gallon?
The conversion uses 7.5 barrels per metric ton and EIA's average U.S. distillate demand of 3.77 million barrels a day in the four weeks to Oct. 2.
| Tranche (as Trump stated it) | Barrels | Days of U.S. demand |
|---|---|---|
| 300,000 tons "immediately" | 2.25 million | 0.6 (about 14 hours) |
| 500,000 tons in November | 3.75 million | 1.0 |
| 1,000,000 tons "immediately thereafter" | 7.5 million | 2.0 |
| 3,000,000 tons "within a short period of time" | 22.5 million | 6.0 |
| Total 4.8 million tons | 36 million | 9.6 |
The October and November tranches together cover 1.6 days, and only the first is scheduled before the Nov. 3 election. Dan Pickering, founder and chief investment officer of Pickering Energy Partners, read the unit as the message, writing to CNN that there is a reason Trump talked about volumes in tons instead of barrels. The tons number looks bigger to a general observer. This is more politics than a game changer.
The better yardstick is what Moscow withdrew. CNN estimated Russia's export ban took roughly 800,000 barrels a day off the market. Spread across the license's 180 days, all 36 million barrels would average about 200,000 a day, a quarter of that gap.
The U.S. is itself a diesel exporter, shipping 1.56 million barrels a day over those four weeks by EIA figures. Relief, if any, comes from easing a tight world market, not from filling U.S. tanks.
By EIA's weekly survey, diesel averaged $6.199 a gallon on Oct. 5, up 62.7% from the last pre-war reading. Distillate stocks are down 13.0% since late February. Futures dropped about 4% at Friday's close, pricing a little more supply, not an end to scarcity. Diesel molecules are scarce and promise to be scarce through October, into November and perhaps beyond,
Tom Kloza of Gulf Oil told Newsweek.
Whether those molecules leave Russia is Moscow's call. Russia banned diesel exports in early July. In June, as we reported, Putin admitted to fuel shortages as Ukraine's drones hit Russian refineries. On July 8, NYMEX ultra-low sulfur diesel futures settled up 11.6% at $154.71 a barrel, the biggest daily gain since March 2022. On Sept. 30, Moscow extended the ban through Oct. 31.
The International Energy Agency says Russian diesel output has fallen by about 30%, and Ukraine's Defense Ministry claims its strikes have taken more than half of Russia's refining capacity offline. Yet Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak told Tass that Russia is immediately starting to lift restrictions on diesel exports ahead of schedule.
Putin said on Oct. 1 that sanctions, not supply, kept Russian diesel off world markets. GL 135 removes that excuse; the Rostov fire tests the rest.
Where the diesel would land, and who would pay, the White House did not say. In November 2021, four tankers carrying 2 million barrels of Russian diesel headed for New York and New Haven, Conn. The first 300,000 tons is about that size, and the Northeast is where Michael Lynch of the Energy Policy Research Foundation sees any effect: The best you could hope for is a tiny dip in prices locally in places like the New York-New Jersey area, Philadelphia maybe.
Even if all goes smoothly, Ed Hirs of the University of Houston told Newsweek, relief will not reach the pump until well after the election.
For the farmers, ranchers and truckers Trump called his "Greatest Priority," the measure with a dollar figure is the Oct. 5 executive order on diesel taxes. It directs Treasury to defer federal diesel taxes incurred through Dec. 31 if it finds the authority to do so, and tells the IRS not to penalize dyed diesel, the tax-exempt fuel normally used in farm equipment, on highways. The White House prices the 24.4-cent tax at about $60 on a 250-gallon fill. It is deferred, not forgiven: Section 4 only tells Treasury to explore eliminating the bill. GasBuddy's Patrick De Haan noted it doesn't add a single gallon of supply.
The administration's strongest case is that diesel is the tightest fuel and every lever counts: a G7 release of 100 million barrels agreed a week earlier, the tax order, and now Russian barrels at the margin. For anyone filling a truck this month, nothing in GL 135 changes the pump price; any move will show first in futures and East Coast markets, then in the Energy Information Administration's weekly price survey.
The barrels Europe still won't buy
Allies chose differently. The European Union has banned Russian diesel since Feb. 5, 2023. The same day, a Treasury determination under Executive Order 14071 set the G7 price cap, a ceiling on what is paid for Russian product, at $100 a barrel for "Premium to Crude" products, a category OFAC says includes diesel. In June, as we reported, the G7 threw its weight behind Ukraine and took aim at Russian oil.
GL 135 does not mention the cap and names no price, and sanctions lawyers will read its "all transactions" language against it. The gap is wide: Friday's futures price of $4.64 a gallon equals $194.88 a barrel, nearly double the cap. The cap governs what buyers pay for Russian product, not futures, so this is only a gauge. Australia's energy minister, Chris Bowen, was blunt: We don’t need or want Russian fuel in Australia.
Western buyers for these barrels are fewer than the license implies.
In Kyiv the timing stung. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were meeting Ukrainian officials in Miami as the deal was announced. Volodymyr Zelensky called it a weak decision, unfortunately, a weak decision by strong partners.
"I believe our team is simply being used as a smokescreen. And that is certainly not fair. It is certainly not how partners should treat each other."
Volodymyr Zelensky, president of Ukraine
The deeper cost is leverage. Zelensky has offered to halt strikes on Russian refineries if Moscow stops attacking Ukraine's energy infrastructure, and U.S. and Ukrainian officials told the Kyiv Independent that Russia has demanded U.S. sanctions relief in those energy-truce talks. A six-month license is a slice of that relief, delivered before any truce. Clayton Seigle of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said the deal does certainly let Moscow off the hook in terms of revenue squeeze.
The only figure General License 135 commits Washington to is an expiry date. Every number a truck stop cares about, from tons loaded to cents at the pump, is still set in Moscow, at terminals within range of Ukraine's drones.
