Russian Diesel Meant to Cut Prices Before Midterms Arrives Nov. 7, Lasts Two Hours

BAYONNE, N.J. — The first tanker of Russian diesel that President Donald Trump arranged to bring down fuel prices before the Nov. 3 midterm elections is due in New York on Nov. 7, carrying enough fuel to run the United States for a little under two hours.

Ship-tracking data shows the tanker left Russia’s Baltic port of Primorsk this week with about 300,000 barrels of ultra-low-sulfur diesel. Americans go through roughly 3.7 million barrels of diesel and other distillates a day, which means the relief should hold from about 9 a.m. until shortly before 11 a.m. on the Saturday after the election.

“We’ve blocked off the whole morning,” said Marisol Tankard-Ruiz, 49, a fuel terminal dispatcher on the Kill Van Kull. “Trucks line up at 8:45, we pump, and by lunch everybody goes back to paying whatever they were paying before Russia helped.”

Trump said this month that Russia would immediately send 300,000 metric tons, followed by 500,000 tons in November and 1 million tons “immediately thereafter.” Freight analysts confirmed that, at sea, “immediately” is about four weeks, and “immediately thereafter” is a word for sometime in spring.

“If you split it evenly, every American gets about five ounces,” said Howard Sippel, 66, a retired weights-and-measures inspector for Hudson County who has been redoing the math on a legal pad since Tuesday. “That’s a juice box of diesel. Per person. Four days late.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday that “the first oil tanker has sailed off to customers, and regular supplies will continue,” a sentence Tankard-Ruiz has printed out and taped above the terminal’s coffee maker, next to a sign-up sheet for the Nov. 7 shift.

As the sun set over the Kill Van Kull, she had already set a phone alarm for 10:55 a.m. that Saturday. It is labeled “prices back.”