Trump again points to Ukraine in explaining fuel price rise

US President Donald Trump again stated that Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries have become one of the main factors behind high fuel prices. According to him, the situation around the Strait of Hormuz now plays a lesser role, since oil shipment volumes through it have increased.

Trump wrote this on Monday, October 5, on Truth Social.

The American president said that gasoline prices are now being driven up primarily by the refining situation. As factors, he cited Ukraine's strikes on Russian refineries, as well as the closure of refining capacity directly in the US, particularly in California.

Trump claims that the Strait of Hormuz has ceased to be the main source of pressure on fuel costs, because significant volumes of oil are again passing through it. At the same time, the war in the Middle East remains one of the factors influencing the global energy market.

This is not the first such statement from the US president. Earlier, he already linked problems in the diesel fuel market to Ukrainian attacks on Russian refining infrastructure and called on Kyiv to abandon such strikes.

Ukraine, for its part, continues to strike Russia's refining sector. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Reuters on October 3 that Kyiv intends to keep attacking Russian refineries in response to the expansion of Russian strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry reported that a significant portion of Russian refining capacity was knocked out as a result of a series of attacks. The exact scale of the damage cannot be independently confirmed, but the disruptions have already affected the Russian fuel market.

According to the International Energy Agency, strikes on more complex refinery equipment can put individual units out of operation for a long period. Russia was forced to restrict exports of petroleum products to secure its own market, further reducing fuel supply on the international market.

These factors have the most noticeable impact on diesel. The restriction of Russian supplies coincided with tension in the Middle East and other disruptions in the global oil products market.

Fuel prices in the US indeed remain significantly higher than last year's levels. According to AAA, on October 5 the average price of regular gasoline was about $4.37 per gallon, compared to $3.13 a year earlier. The average price of diesel fuel reached $6.32 per gallon, compared to about $3.69 a year ago.

At the same time, American gasoline has become slightly cheaper over the past week: the average price dropped from about $4.48 to $4.37 per gallon. Thus, the current price level is shaped by several factors, including the situation on the global oil market, refining volumes, and supplies of petroleum products.

Based on materials from: Donald Trump, AAA