Wall Street Journal: US warns Ukraine against striking third country tankers in the Black Sea

The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, 25 July 2026, that the US administration has formally warned Ukraine that attacks on ships and oil infrastructure belonging to third countries in the Black Sea are unacceptable.

According to the report, the warning followed a Ukrainian drone attack near the Russian port of Novorossiysk that damaged four tankers, one of them chartered by the US company Chevron. Chevron chief executive Mike Wirth spoke with administration officials this week about the situation in the Black Sea. Novorossiysk is the export terminal of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which carries about 2 percent of the world's daily oil supply, and Chevron holds stakes in the consortium and in Kazakhstan's Tengiz oil field. Ukraine's ambassador has also confirmed that Washington raised concerns over strikes that affected US oil interests.

Disruption on this route, alongside the constrained traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, is a second front of pressure on global oil supply, a variable that bears directly on oil prices and Iran's foreign currency earnings.