US lifting some restrictions on Russian oil in light of spike in prices due to Iran conflict

The U.S. announced Friday that it is lifting some restrictions on Russian oil as it aims to “unsanction” it to impact the rising price of oil as a result of the conflict in Iran. 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox Business that the U.S. would reverse course and allow India to buy some Russian oil. 

“Yesterday, Treasury agreed to let our allies in India start buying Russian oil that was already on the water,” Bessent said. 

“The Indians had been very good actors. We had asked them to stop buying sanctioned Russian oil this fall. They did. They were going to substitute it with U.S. oil, but to ease the temporary gap of oil around the world, we have given them permission to accept the Russian oil,” he continued. 

“We may unsanction other Russian oil,” he told host Larry Kudlow.

“The other thing Treasury can do here, Larry, is, there are hundreds of millions of… barrels of sanctioned crude on the water and, in essence, by unsanctioning them, Treasury can create supply,” Bessent said. “We are looking at that. We’re going to keep a cadence of announcing measures to bring relief to the market.”