Senate Democrats challenge Russian oil waiver—Moscow revenues hit two-year high

Russia is sharing intelligence on US military positions with Iran and advising Tehran on drone tactics Moscow developed against Ukraine. An Iranian drone killed six US soldiers at Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, on 1 March. The US–Israeli war on Iran has shut the Strait of Hormuz and pushed global oil prices above $100.

To cool the resulting price spike, Washington has twice eased sanctions on Russian oil in the past six weeks. Moscow is now earning an estimated $150 million a day in extra revenue—money it uses to strike Ukraine and to keep supplying Iran.

Senator Chris Coons of Delaware walked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent through it on Wednesday. Over a 30-day waiver, that $150 million a day becomes $4.5 billion. Bessent disputed the logic. He did not dispute the number.

The hearing

On 17 April, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a waiver allowing countries to buy Russian oil already loaded on tankers until 16 May. It was the second such license in six weeks.

Two days earlier, Bessent had told reporters Washington would not renew it. On 22 April, he had to explain the reversal to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Coons pushed back. “Your Treasury Department lifted sanctions on Russian oil, giving them an extra $150 million a day in revenue,” he told Bessent. “And those funds are going not just to kill Ukrainians—Russia’s using its profits to support Iran with drones and intelligence to kill our troops.”

A parallel waiver on Iranian oil, calculated by NBC News at more than $14 billion in crude sold since March, has handed Tehran nearly nine times what it received under the 2015 nuclear deal Trump has repeatedly called a scandal.

Bessent’s counter was arithmetic. Treasury, he told the committee, put “more than 250 million barrels on the water.” Without the waiver, crude would be at $150, not $100. Russian oil still sells at a discount: “100% of 100 is less than 80% of 150.” The American consumer, he argued, is better off.

What the American consumer is paying

The national average gasoline price was $2.94 a gallon in late February, before the war with Iran began. By 16 April, it had reached $4.09, according to AAA—a jump of more than 30% since the US and Israel struck Iran. “Well—look, the folks in Delaware are buying $4 a gallon gas today,” Coons told Bessent.

Russian crude had been trading at a $28-per-barrel discount to the global price in February, the penalty Western sanctions built in. By mid-March, under the first waiver, that discount had collapsed to $4.80. Moscow was selling the same barrels to the same buyers for $23 more each.

What the numbers show

The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), a Finland-based tracker of Russian fossil fuel exports, reported on 17 April that Moscow’s fossil fuel revenues jumped 52% month-on-month in March, reaching €713 million ($834 million) per day—the highest level in two years.

Seaborne crude revenues alone rose 115%. Russian budget revenues from oil reached an estimated €7.4 billion ($8.7 billion) for the month.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on X on 19 April that more than 110 shadow-fleet tankers were at sea carrying over 12 million tonnes of Russian crude—about $10 billion of oil that can now be sold without consequences.

The rationale that changed

The first waiver, issued on 12 March, was framed as an emergency response to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The emergency rationale expired with the ceasefire. The waiver didn’t.

Bessent told the committee he had been approached at the IMF and World Bank spring meetings by finance ministers from “more than ten of the most vulnerable and poorest countries in terms of energy.” Washington moved past the Iran emergency to a humanitarian rationale with no sunset.

Two days after his X post, Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram that “the reduction in sanctions and political pressure on the aggressor from our partners has produced a partial resurgence of Russian military ambitions.”

Bessent was asked whether he would rule out another extension on 16 May. He did not. The next 30 days will cost Russia’s war chest roughly $4.5 billion more—paid, in effect, at American gas pumps.