General License 131G, issued by OFAC on 25 June and signed by Bradley T. Smith, authorises negotiation involving Lukoil International GmbH and any entity in which LIG holds a 50% or greater interest1. The text does not name ISAB, Priolo Gargallo or Italy anywhere.
Litasco, Lukoil's Swiss trading arm, sold ISAB to GOI Energy in May 2023 with Italian government approval granted that April. GOI has held the 320,000 b/d Sicilian refinery ever since, and is selling it onward to Ludoil Energy under a purchase agreement signed on 13 May 2026, structured in two phases and conditional on a final Italian Golden Power order and antitrust clearance. The only Lukoil link was a roughly €150m financial claim and a Milan court seizure order against GOI's ISAB share capital, a debt dispute rather than an ownership stake, and Litasco waived that seizure in June.
The conflation survived because two clocks carrying the same date sat next to each other and only one was ever read. GL 131G renewals fell monthly on the 25th, and the Carlyle Group negotiation window over Lukoil's international assets ran to the same day. Trade coverage attached the date to the asset it recognised rather than to the entity the licence actually names. ISAB is not among the international assets in that negotiation, because it has not been Lukoil's to sell for three years. Our own record carried the error when the licence was issued.
For a desk pricing Mediterranean product supply the risk shape changes rather than disappears. Priolo's throughput is exposed to an Italian commercial sale, not to a 25 July OFAC clock, and it does not go dark when that clock runs out. The supply tail the market has been carrying on Med gasoil and fuel oil since June should come out of the model. What remains runs on Italian process, and OFAC does not set that timetable.
