The United States on Thursday, October 1, urged Europeans to help them lower diesel prices by “immediately” putting more fuel on the market, on the eve of an emergency meeting of European Union (EU) countries on the subject.
“Our European partners should accelerate the implementation of their existing commitments and immediately make additional volumes available to address the current disruptions,” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wrote on X.
His Energy colleague, Chris Wright, told Fox News that “Europe can also help improve the situation.” “It is time for a coordinated marketing of diesel stocks” as winter approaches, he added.
The tone is more urgent than that used by Donald Trump. During a trip to Texas, the American president said Thursday that he “could” ask the Europeans to draw on their diesel reserves.
Blocking the road to deliveries, a “bad surprise”
According to press information, his government would like European countries, notably France and Germany, to put on the market diesel taken from their strategic reserves, like what was done with crude oil. He would threaten to ban the export of American diesel otherwise.
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Blocking the road to deliveries of this fuel would be a “bad surprise”, reacted the European Commissioner for Trade, Maros Sefcovic. Present on American soil as part of the G20 Trade, he warned of the “very serious consequences” for the European economy that such a ban would have, without however confirming that Washington had indeed formulated such a threat.
The pump price of diesel in the European Union has reached a new historic high with a weekly average of 2.24 euros per liter, according to a compilation of national data published Thursday by the European Commission.
A meeting was convened Friday morning between the European Commission and EU member countries in order to work on a coordinated response to this surge, a Commission spokesperson said Thursday evening, without specifying whether the objective was to respond to the American request.
A “willingness on both sides to work together”
The Élysée stressed that Emmanuel Macron must also organize “soon” a meeting of G7 leaders to discuss in particular “coordination on the release of stocks at the G7 level in conjunction with the International Energy Agency”.
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There is between Washington and its European partners a “willingness on both sides to work together” to resolve the crisis, said American Trade Representative Jamieson Greer after G20 meetings.
“What is certain is that we cannot claim to have a dialogue and then have decisions or measures which are brutal or in any case not based on a consensus resulting from a dialogue,” French Foreign Trade Minister Nicolas Forissier told AFP.
Diesel reaches record level in the United States
In the United States, diesel fuel reached a record high of $6.53 per gallon (3.78 liters) at the end of September, according to the American Automobile Association. “American farmers, truckers and businesses should not have to bear the brunt of a global diesel shortage alone,” said Scott Bessent.
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The country’s refineries – as elsewhere – are running at full capacity to transform crude oil into regular gasoline and diesel but Ukraine’s attacks on Russian refineries and Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz are depriving the market of a significant quantity of fuel.
Donald Trump mainly emphasizes the consequences of kyiv’s strikes, leaving aside the disruptions linked to his war against Tehran. The American president briefly said he was in favor of a temporary ban on diesel exports, demanded by certain elected officials in his camp. He has not recently reiterated his support for such a measure, considered risky by some of his advisers, but has not explicitly lifted the threat either.
With AFP
