US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed at a White House briefing on 16 April that General License 134A, the OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) waiver covering Russian crude loaded before 12 March, will not be renewed. "We will not be renewing the general license on Russian oil, and we will not be renewing the general license on Iranian oil," Bessent said. The waiver had expired on 11 April with Reuters, Semafor and Bloomberg pointing to extension. Treasury paired the non-renewal with a coordinated US, UK and EU redesignation of Rosneft and Lukoil under the SDN (Specially Designated Nationals) list, and a statement calling for "an immediate ceasefire."
The dollar figure is the point. At $121 Urals the waiver was handing Moscow roughly $150 million a day against the $73 barrel design price the sanctions architecture was built around . That is a 2.6x inversion: a waiver intended as a market-stabilisation tool was running as a windfall the price cap was built to prevent. OFAC granted Lukoil's non-Russian retail network, some 2,000 forecourts across Europe, the Middle East and the United States, a wind-down exemption to 29 October, and gave the Lukoil Neftochim Burgas refinery in Bulgaria a separate operational licence. Asian refiners led by India and the Philippines had lobbied openly for GL 134A to continue; the non-renewal landed against their lobbying.
The enforcement test now runs through the wind-down dates, not the press release. A six-month Lukoil retail grace period lets European and US forecourts liquidate inventory before the cliff falls in October. Shorter, unpublished licences for non-retail operations will appear in OFAC guidance over the coming weeks and are the measurable portion of the revenue cut. Whether GL 134A died as a deliberate Trump policy turn or as the only available answer to a 2.6x Urals-to-design-price inversion is a question about motive; the coordinated redesignation is the dated fact.
