Then Nespelen made a turn-about trip to Port Arthur, Texas, returning to Guantanamo Bay on 22 November with a full load of motor gasoline.

For the next year and one half she carried gasoline and diesel oil between Argentia and St. John's, Newfoundland; Melville, Rhode Island; Aruba; and Trinidad.

She operated out of Tripoli until 19 March at which time she got underway for Bari; Phaleron Bay, Greece; Larnaca, Cyprus; Malta and Gibraltar, her last stop in the Mediterranean before sailing 14 April 1953 for the United States, arriving Norfolk on the 26th.

She was then assigned another tour of duty in the Mediterranean and revisited the previous ports and such new ones as Iskenderun, Turkey; Genoa and Naples, Italy; Sete and St. Louis du Rhone, France before heading home in June.

In the years that followed Nespelen resumed her pattern of operations: alternating duty carrying fuel from ports in the Caribbean and on the East Coast to bases in the far northern Atlantic with deployments in the Mediterranean supporting the 6th Fleet.