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- The US is lifting its sanctions on Russian oil for about four weeks to relieve surging prices.
- Scott Bessent said the move would “not provide significant financial benefit” to Russia.
- Sanctioning Russian oil is a key lever the West uses to pressure Moscow’s ability to invade Ukraine.
The US Treasury Department is lifting Russian oil sanctions until April 11, as the Trump administration seeks to relieve global crude supplies choked by war in the Middle East.
A notice issued by the department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on Thursday laid out a roughly four-week window authorizing the “sale, delivery, or offloading of crude oil or petroleum products” from Russia.
The move eases a yearslong effort by the US and its allies to squeeze Russia’s finances in response to its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Moscow, however, has still benefited from its energy trade — taxing the industry typically accounted for nearly half of its federal budget revenues before 2022 — by quietly transporting it via what the West has called a “shadow fleet” of third-party tankers.
An analysis from Urgewald, a German NGO, showed Russia’s fossil fuel export revenues averaged 510 million euros, or $587 million per day in the week following the strikes — 14% higher than the daily average in February daily average.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday that Russia stood to benefit from the temporary lifting of sanctions, but described the gains as limited in scale.
“This narrowly tailored, short-term measure applies only to oil already in transit and will not provide significant financial benefit to the Russian government, which derives the majority of its energy revenue from taxes assessed at the point of extraction,” he wrote in a post on X.
Brent crude oil prices were 0.6% higher at $101.07 per barrel at 11:16 p.m. on Thursday while US West Texas Intermediate was 0.4% higher at $96.15 per barrel.
The US and Israel launched a massive airstrike campaign against Iran on February 28, attacking over 5,500 targets with land, sea, and air assets. Iran has, in turn, vowed to block the Strait of Hormuz, the critical waterway serving the Persian Gulf, which accounts for about a fifth of the world’s crude oil.
Traffic in the strait has plummeted in the past week amid over a dozen reports of commercial vessels being attacked in its vicinity.
Despite sweeping Western sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has reoriented much of its energy exports away from Europe and toward alternative partners in Asia, notably China and India, where discounted Russian crude has become a major source of demand.
Last week, the US granted a temporary 30-day waiver to allow Indian refiners to purchase Russian oil.
Ukraine and its allies have long raised concerns about Russia’s ability to muster resources from its global energy trade to feed its war manufacturing industry. The Kremlin is now spending record amounts of its federal budget on defense, reaching 6.3% of its GDP in 2025.
Daily revenues of $610 million would be the equivalent of 12,000 to 30,000 of Russia’s Shahed-136 one-way attack drones, based on estimates that the loitering munitions cost $20,000 to $50,000 each.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly warned Iran that continuing to impede traffic along the strait would incur further US military action.
But Tehran has maintained a defiant posture, retaliating with drone and missile attacks on its neighbors and US forces in the region. Reports say it’s also begun to sparsely lay mines along the strait, which would further delay an opening of the strait by forcing the US and its allies to meticulously sweep for and clear explosives.
On Thursday, the new Iranian supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, issued a statement through a newscaster that his government would continue blocking the strait.
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