Iran war causes bigger losses in diesel supplies despite Trump’s claims | Today’s news
Diesel prices have never been higher. US President Donald Trump says it’s not because of the war he started almost seven months ago.
“The rise in world oil prices is mostly due to the war between Russia and Ukraine, not Iran,” Trump said in a social media post this week. He has since repeated his claim.
However, according to estimates compiled by Bloomberg and verified by oil traders, the war in Iran has removed more diesel supplies from the market than the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
From March to August, estimates by energy analysis firms Energy Aspects, Kpler and Vortexa suggest an average loss of about 770,000 barrels per day from the Middle East compared to the same period in 2025. That is more than double the roughly 350,000 bpd loss of Russian supplies over the same time frame.
The global energy market has been thrown into chaos this year, with a widely expected oil glut wiped out by the Iran conflict. Oil prices surged after the US and Israel attacked Tehran in late February, with supplies squeezed through the Strait of Hormuz. While barrels of crude make their way through Hormuz again, supplies of petroleum products, including diesel, are significantly restricted.
Certainly, the impact of the Ukraine conflict on diesel supplies has increased in recent months following a spate of attacks on Russian oil refineries. In July and August, when Moscow imposed a ban on diesel exports, supplies fell by 615,000 barrels a day compared to the same months in 2025. That’s almost as many barrels as were lost from the Middle East.
Critically, the loss of the Russian supplies came months after the Iran war, during which the world’s fuel and oil supplies had dwindled – leaving little cushion to absorb the blow.
“In pure volume terms, Iran is bigger,” Eugene Lindell, head of refined products at consultancy FGE NexantECA, said of the loss from the war. “But of course, prices are set at the border,” he said. Taking hundreds of thousands more barrels off the market “turned a super-tight market into a historically tight one.”
White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said in an emailed statement Friday that “the president is right: The Russia-Ukraine war, which would never have started if President Trump were in office, has contributed significantly to oil prices reaching record highs. President Trump’s energy dominance agenda has made the United States the world’s leading oil producer and exporter.”
As a country, Russia is typically the world’s second largest exporter of diesel, an industrial fuel essential for everything from trucking to agriculture. In 2024, fuel exports averaged around 930,000 barrels per day, according to Vortexa.
But as a region, the Middle East is a more prolific shipper, exporting around 1.7 million barrels per day in the same year.
Trump said in a post on social media that Moscow and Kiev had agreed to stop attacks on energy infrastructure. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said no deal had been reached and strikes continued this week. Russia’s ban on diesel exports may be extended until October.
US and European refineries, meanwhile, are running at near full capacity to try to meet global demand.
European oil futures rose more than 100% in the first months of the Iran war, while US contracts also surged. Those prices cooled when the US and Iran agreed to a temporary ceasefire. But as the conflict in the Middle East escalated again and Russian exports collapsed, prices rose again, eclipsing spring highs. In the US, oil futures settled at an all-time high on Tuesday.
Mid-term battlefields hit diesel, the price of heating oil rose sharply
Given the scale of the problem, an agreement between Russia and Ukraine to end the strikes could offer some relief but would not fully resolve the supply shortfall, analysts and traders say.
“The biggest reason for the shortages of diesel and products and the surge in prices is the shortages related to the conflict in Iran, although damage to Russian refineries is exacerbating these trends,” said Rachel Ziemba, senior associate fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank. “A cease-fire leading to refinery repairs and the return of Russian products would relieve some of the pressure.”
This article was generated from an automated news agency source without text modification.
