General License 131F, the OFAC authorisation governing the sale of the ISAB refinery by its sanctioned owner Lukoil, runs to 27 June. The licence permits only negotiation of the sale, not its completion, which leaves the Sicilian plant's crude procurement under a sustained sanctions overhang. ISAB is one of Italy's largest refineries; Lukoil is the Russian oil major that has owned it since 2008.
GL 131F lets the parties talk without letting money or assets change hands, a holding pattern rather than a resolution, so the refinery operates under the constant question of whether its ownership clears sanctions before the licence lapses. Procurement counterparties price that uncertainty into every cargo, which raises the refinery's effective crude cost regardless of the spot market.
The 27 June expiry twins with the GL 134C waiver cliff on 17 June, creating back-to-back sanctions deadlines that both tighten European-accessible crude inside a single fortnight. One governs whether Russian oil keeps flowing to Indian buyers; the other governs whether a major Mediterranean refinery's ownership stays in limbo. Together they make late June a concentrated test of how far the US will press the Russian-oil chokehold against European refining capacity.
