18JUN

US crude waiver lapses, no successor

2 min read

09:57UTC

The US General License 134C crude waiver expired on 17 June with no successor issued, and the gap has now run 26 days, the longest of the war.

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EconomicAssessed

Key takeaway

The US crude waiver lapsed on 17 June with no successor, the gap now 26 days and counting.

The US crude-oil waiver known as General License 134C expired on 17 June with no replacement issued since, according to S&P Global ¹. The waiver ran as three consecutive thirty-day licences that softened the sanctions hit on buyers of Russian crude; as of 13 July the gap has reached 26 days, the longest of the war, against the fifteen-day gap recorded on 1 July .

OFAC, the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, has announced nothing. The lapse is read from the absence of any new licence across OFAC's recent-actions listings and the specialist trackers that logged all three prior iterations within a day, not from any Treasury decision to let it fall ². It should not be confused with the separate Lukoil retail-sale licence that expires on 25 July.

The crude cover fell away in the same fortnight the diesel export ban took effect, narrowing Russia's fiscal room just as the physical fuel squeeze turned hardest.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

OFAC is the part of the US Treasury that decides which sanctions exemptions apply to Russian oil. Three times this year it issued a short licence letting buyers keep purchasing Russian crude that was loaded before a cut-off date, each time renewing it within a day or two of the old one expiring. This time, the licence expired on 17 June and, as of 13 July, 26 days have passed with no replacement. This matters because that 26-day gap is far longer than any previous pause, and it has now gone unrenewed for longer than the licence itself normally lasts. Buyers who relied on that legal cover for Russian crude cargoes are operating without it.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

OFAC administers the crude waiver as a discretionary licence renewed in short windows rather than a standing exemption, which means silence is itself an active policy outcome: without an affirmative renewal, the underlying sanctions apply in full by default.

The 30-day bridge structure was built for administrative flexibility, but it also means a single missed renewal cycle, if it becomes two, functions as a de facto termination without Treasury having to announce one.

Escalation

Direction: the gap has widened from 15 days (as of 1 July) to 26 days (as of 13 July) with no successor licence and no public Treasury statement of intent, consistent with a deliberate wind-down rather than an administrative delay.

What could happen next?

Consequence
Buyers still routing Russian crude purchases through US-linked insurance or banking lose their legal cover for cargoes loaded after 17 June until a successor licence, if any, is issued.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: The GL 134 series ran as three consecutive 30-day bridges, 134A from 12 March, 134B from 17 April, 134C from 18 May, each renewed within a day or two of the prior one expiring, a rhythm regular enough that trade-compliance trackers built routine alerts around it.

Counter-parallel: No prior gap in that rhythm exceeded a handful of days, and OFAC's own recent-actions listing has shown nothing since 17 June. There is no earlier case in this waiver's history of a gap this long resolving into a renewal, so the 26-day figure has no positive precedent to point to.

Consensus view: S&P Global's tracking of the GL 134 series notes each of the three prior 30-day bridges, ending 11 April, 16 May and 17 June, was caught and reported by every specialist compliance tracker within 24 to 48 hours of renewal. A 26-day silence across every one of those same trackers is treated as a genuine lapse, not a reporting gap.

Counter-view: Russian state media has routinely argued that US Treasury licensing actions carry limited practical weight once crude trade has shifted into shadow-fleet vessels, non-dollar settlement and buyers outside US jurisdiction, meaning a lapsed waiver mainly affects the shrinking pool of transactions still routed through US-linked insurance and banking.

Key tension: Whether the 26-day gap marks OFAC quietly ending the waiver programme, or whether the crude trade it used to cover has already migrated far enough outside US-linked channels that the waiver's absence changes little in practice.

Sources:S&P Global

Mentions:OFAC →General License 134C →Russia →Lukoil →US Treasury →S&P Global Platts →

First Reported In

Update #23 · Moscow rations diesel as US cover lapses

S&P Global· 13 Jul 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

15 days: Russia's crude waiver lapses

The 15-day unrenewed gap noted on 1 July escalated into a 26-day gap by 13 July with still no successor licence.

Occurred 1 Jul 2026

Read story →

This Event

US crude waiver lapses, no successor

Russia loses the US licence that eased trade in its crude just as its domestic fuel squeeze peaks.

Led to

Treasury drops Turkish and Indian names

The unannounced Treasury delistings land in the same weeks as an unrenewed crude oil waiver, both signs of a quiet US easing on Russia sanctions enforcement.

Occurred 1 Jul 2026

Read story →

Urals crude nearly triples in weeks

The 36-day waiver gap by 23 July extends the 26-day gap logged on 13 July.

Occurred 23 Jul 2026

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Different Perspectives

Cross-border power traders

The France-Germany day-ahead spread flipped from a EUR 17.20 German premium on 1 August to a EUR 4.15 French premium on 3 August, the same day French curtailment peaked. They cannot yet attribute the flip to curtailment alone, since a like-for-like overnight comparison shows French nuclear output rising while wind fell and demand returned on the weekday step.

EDF

River-cooling limits took 7.6 GW, 12 per cent of its fleet, offline on 3 August, the highest curtailment since the heatwave began, with an easing forecast to 4.3 GW on 4 August and 3 GW after. It manages the cut as a recurring seasonal constraint, expecting it to lift with river temperature, not repair.

Gasunie

TTF, the Dutch hub it operates, drifted to roughly EUR 55 to 58 per MWh across the window, staying inside its recent range through both the German spark reversal and the French curtailment. It reads a flat hub price as evidence that neither event this window carried enough weight to move the fuel leg on its own.

German gas-fired generators

Record German solar of 18,761 MW on 2 August pushed the clean spark spread to minus 18.48 EUR/MWh, a loss-making day, before it returned to plus 16.20 on 3 August. They now price dispatch against post-solar residual load rather than wind alone, since the sign flipped inside 48 hours on unchanged fuel and carbon costs.

European Commission (DG Energy)

Its implementing-measures register logged transposition notices from only Portugal and Slovakia against Wednesday's Article 94 deadline for Directive (EU) 2024/1788, with 25 states silent. It expects the register to fill only gradually, since filing routinely lags legislating and any infringement track against non-notifying states runs on a slower clock than the deadline itself.

Spain's LNG terminal operators

Spain's 9,145 GWh terminal inventory is the largest single stock in the EU LNG network, an option value that can reroute cargoes wherever the winter strip pays best rather than a cavern gas obligation tied to a fixed date. That flexibility matters more as Germany's cavern shortfall pushes more of the winter security question onto import infrastructure.