The 320,000 b/d ISAB Priolo refinery in Sicily kept running past 28 June. Hours before General License (GL) 131F lapsed, the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued GL 131G on 25 June, a seventh straight monthly extension of the authorisation to negotiate the sale of Lukoil International GmbH (LIG)1. The new licence runs to 25 July and covers negotiation only; closing the sale still needs a separate OFAC transaction licence that has never been issued, leaving one of Italy's larger refineries a single expiry away from stranding inside the sanctions perimeter because its owner is the sanctioned Russian major Lukoil.
Four approvals still stand between Ludoil Energy, the prospective buyer, and operational control. The OFAC transaction licence has not been issued. Italy granted only conditional Golden Power clearance on 4 June, not a final one. Antitrust and broader regulatory sign-offs remain pending. Ludoil, which signed the purchase earlier this year, can negotiate, not operate or close, and Lukoil still owns the asset.
Clearing a cross-border refinery sale with parties on OFAC's Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list and four open regulatory tracks inside 27 days does not happen. The realistic base case is GL 131H in late July, which makes the monthly extension the policy rather than a route to closure. For a Mediterranean product desk, that removes the supply cliff this month but leaves 320,000 b/d of Sicilian capacity that clears, or does not, on OFAC's calendar.
The enforcement escalation some desks priced after the clean GL 134C lapse went the other way. OFAC spent the window extending licences, not designating; the forward Russian-enforcement premium that a protection-and-indemnity (P&I) club or shadow-fleet listing would have triggered did not ratchet higher.
