Trucking News · Nationwide · October 25, 2026

First Tanker of Russian Diesel Under New Deal Heads for New York

A gray-haired trucker fuels a silver semi at a waterfront pump and looks toward a large tanker ship with a city skyline behind — Illustration for this story. Not a photo of a specific location.

A tanker carrying 40,000 metric tons of Russian diesel is on its way to New York under a new U.S.-Russia supply agreement, according to FreightWaves, which cited reporting from Reuters and the Associated Press.

The ship and the schedule

The Malta-flagged tanker Agioi Fanendes loaded ultra-low-sulfur diesel at Primorsk, Russia's Baltic Sea oil port, on Oct. 22, FreightWaves reported. It is expected to arrive in the United States on Nov. 7, according to LSEG ship-tracking data cited by Reuters.

That arrival date falls after the Nov. 3 Election Day.

The deal behind it

The shipment is the first identified U.S.-bound cargo under the agreement President Donald Trump announced Oct. 9, according to the report. The diesel sanctions relief falls under General License 135, issued Oct. 9 by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, FreightWaves reported.

Reuters described it as the first U.S. import of Russian diesel since a 2022 ban on Russian oil imports. AP quoted maritime analysts at Kpler who said it would be the first Russian diesel delivery since July 2023. The reports differ on that point, so Big Rig Daily is not calling it a first ever shipment.

How much diesel is that?

At roughly 300,000 barrels, the cargo is about 7% of the approximately 4 million barrels of diesel the U.S. uses each day, according to AP figures cited by FreightWaves.

Energy policy experts cited by AP said the import agreement was unlikely to substantially reduce fuel prices.

The politics

The shipment comes as the administration seeks to rein in high diesel prices ahead of the midterm elections, FreightWaves reported.

"The diesel deal shows that Washington's Russia policy is now driven by high prices at the pump before the November 3 midterm elections, rather than by any shared trans-Atlantic strategy," said Matthias Matthijs, senior fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations, as quoted in the report.

What it means at the pump

For drivers, the takeaway from the reporting is simple: one tanker is a small amount compared with daily national use, and experts do not expect it to move prices much on its own.

To see what current prices mean for a trip, try the free truck fuel cost calculator. Owner-operators can check what is left after fuel with the owner-operator profit calculator.

For more on fuel prices this week, read Oil hits its highest level since March as gas climbs to $4.29.