U.S. Treasury extends licence for sale of Lukoil foreign assets until late June

OFAC extended a licence authorizing Lukoil to hold negotiations and sign deals for the sale of Lukoil International GmbH (LIG), which owns the company’s foreign assets, or any entity controlled by it. 

However, any transactions must be approved by a separate OFAC permit.

This marks the sixth time the United States has extended the deadline for Lukoil to sell its foreign assets. The previous extension had been set to expire on May 30.

The United States imposed sanctions on Russia for the first time in President Donald Trump’s second term on Oct. 22, 2025, targeting the country’s largest oil producers, Rosneft and Lukoil.

Following the new sanctions, Lukoil announced plans to sell its foreign assets. The company later received and accepted a buyout offer from international commodities trader Gunvor, with the key terms of the deal agreed upon. However, the transaction ultimately failed to proceed after the U.S. Treasury Department rejected it.

At the end of January 2026, Lukoil signed an agreement with U.S. investment firm Carlyle Group to sell LIG. The deal is awaiting approval from the OFAC.

The authorization for transactions involving Lukoil’s foreign petrol station networks and Bulgarian assets has also been extended separately until October 29, 2026.

The restrictions imposed on Lukoil do not apply to oilfield and other services linked to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium.

At the time the sanctions were imposed, Lukoil was involved in projects across Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Egypt, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana, Mexico, the United Arab Emirates, and the Republic of Congo. The company also owned refineries in Bulgaria, Romania, and the Netherlands, along with a retail network of around 2,500 petrol stations spanning 19 countries.

As of the end of 2024, Lukoil’s proved oil and gas reserves in its international projects stood at 1.345 billion barrels of oil equivalent.

Lukoil fully wrote off its investment in LIG in 2025, recognizing an impairment loss of 1.66 trillion rubles (about $23.4 billion).