Trump administration allows purchase of Russian oil already at sea
The United States is temporarily giving the green light to buy Russian oil already at sea, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday, in the latest move by the Trump administration to ease wartime sanctions that restrict Russia’s oil industry as the world grapples with high oil prices.
The authorization will last one month and applies to petroleum products from Russia that were loaded onto ships no later than Thursday, according to documents released by the Treasury.
Bessent said the move would “allow countries to buy Russian oil currently stuck at sea.”
“This narrowly tailored and short-term measure applies only to oil already in transit and will not bring significant financial benefits to the Russian government, which derives the majority of its energy revenue from taxes imposed at the point of extraction,” he wrote on X.
Some 124 million barrels of Russian oil are currently at sea around the world, CBS News has learned.
The Treasury secretary said the administration is trying to “increase the global reach of existing supply” as the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran cripples oil trade and oil prices reach their highest levels in years.
Last week, Treasury issued a more restrictive sanctions license allowing India to purchase oil and petroleum products from Russia for a month. The Trump administration had previously pressured India to stop buying Russian oil.
The moves give oil importers a reprieve from tough U.S. sanctions that have made trade with large parts of the Russian economy, including the energy sector, difficult. Russia has faced tough sanctions since it launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The temporary reprieves have drawn sharp criticism from congressional Democrats, who say they could enrich Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government and weaken sanctions intended to make it harder for Russia to finance its war against Ukraine.
Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii posted to X Thursday evening, perhaps in response to sanctions relief: “Looks like we fought Iran and Russia won.”
Last week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and 11 other Democrats blasted the Trump administration for granting India a license to buy Russian oil. They argued that rising oil prices had already given Putin a windfall and that easing sanctions could benefit him even more.
“Instead of changing course, the President is only making the situation worse by giving Putin, his shadow fleet, and the traders still selling sanctioned oil a free pass to increase oil shipments to Russia’s second-largest importer,” the Democrats wrote. “The new escape routes opened by the president, coupled with dramatically higher global energy prices, give Putin a huge financial boost and the means to continue his bloody war in Ukraine.”
A day before the Treasury authorized the sanctions on Thursday, Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev met in Florida with U.S. negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, both sides said.
In a post, Dmitriev said the group discussed “the current crisis in global energy markets,” adding that the United States and other countries were beginning to understand the “destructive nature of sanctions against Russia,” according to a translation by Russia’s Interfax news agency. Witkoff said they discussed “a variety of topics.”
Shortly after Bessent announced the sanctions authorization on Thursday, Dmitriev wrote on European bureaucrats will soon be forced to recognize this reality, acknowledge their strategic errors and atone. »
The Trump administration is scrambling to deal with a war-induced supply shortage. Commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz – a chokepoint that normally carries 20% of the world’s oil – has slowed to the point where Iran is carrying out ship strikes and threatening shippers not to pass through, severely limiting the amount of oil from major Arab producers that can reach global markets.
The international oil benchmark, Brent, traded just above $100 a barrel for much of Thursday afternoon, down from around $72 a barrel the day before the war began in late February.
President Trump and senior U.S. officials have proposed a range of other options to boost supply. Some 172 million barrels of oil will be released from the United States’ strategic oil reserve, and Mr. Trump has considered asking U.S. Navy ships to escort through the Strait of Hormuz or even “take [the strait] finished”, like he told CBS News earlier this week.
