The G7 convened at Evian-les-Bains, the French Alpine spa town on Lake Geneva, from Monday 15 June, with Russian-crude policy on the agenda as two sanctions clocks ran down. OFAC, the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, lets General License 134C lapse at 12:01 EDT on Wednesday 17 June, the summit's final day. GL 134C is the vessel-services umbrella, insurance, crewing, bunkering and salvage, that covers Russian crude loaded before 17 April; no successor GL 134D has been published, the outcome Rubio signalled when he said Washington wanted to end the waivers as soon as it could 1.
The European Union's 21st sanctions package, proposed by the European Commission on Tuesday 9 June, lists 30 more shadow-fleet vessels to push the total above 660 and targets banks and oil-trading entities, though the maritime-services ban remains blocked by Malta and Greece 2. Brussels is racing a different clock. It wants the package adopted to freeze the dynamic price cap at $44.10/bbl, set in January 2026, before the 15 July formula review 3. The formula sets the cap at 15% below the six-month average Urals price, the Russian export benchmark. With Urals now near $87 against $58 in February, the July review would auto-lift the cap toward ~$75/bbl, restoring margin to Russian sellers and compressing the very discount this desk is short.
Two forces now pull in opposite directions on Russian-crude availability inside one week. The US waiver lapse tightens it; the EU formula review threatens to loosen it. The cap was built to track the market so it would not need constant renegotiation, and that automation now cuts against the coalition: a lookback set during cheaper months mechanically loosens as the conflict premium feeds into the average. Evian is where the political weight tips between the two, which makes the summit, not the calendar, the live variable.
A third clock runs alongside. The Lukoil-ISAB transaction under General License 131F runs to 27 June against Italy's conditional Golden Power signal, Rome's strategic-veto mechanism over foreign energy deals , with no OFAC transaction licence behind it. Three separate instruments resolve inside a fortnight, each capable of moving the Urals discount and the Med feedstock cost the desk carries. No Northern relief offsets a tightening barrel either: Iraq's Kirkuk-Ceyhan throughput is stalled at 190kbd against its 770kbd target .
