The Trump administration has officially terminated its short-lived, highly controversial sanctions-waiver program for Russian oil, reverting to a policy of maximum economic pressure as global energy vectors shift, Bloomberg reported.
The White House decided against extending the emergency temporary exemptions, bringing a definitive end to a brief policy window that had allowed certain tranches of Russian crude back onto Western-regulated global maritime markets.
The birth and demise of General License 134B
The US Treasury Department under Secretary Scott Bessent initially rolled out the specialized exemptions in March, subsequently approving a second 30-day extension via General License 134B in April.
The waivers were narrowly tailored, applying exclusively to Russian crude that had already been loaded onto commercial tankers as of April 17, with an absolute operational ceiling running through May 16.
The White House originally designed the measures as a shock absorber for global energy security, aiming to cool down international energy indexes after Brent crude surged past the $100-a-barrel threshold following the outbreak of the US-Israeli war with Iran on Feb. 28.
Treasury officials confirmed the exemptions are no longer necessary because the specific Russian oil volumes previously stuck at sea have been “largely sucked up” and fully integrated into global inventories, making further updates redundant.
A geopolitical rift over the ‘war machine’
The expiration of the waivers will likely defuse an increasingly bitter diplomatic rift between Washington and its primary European allies. Across the EU, capitals had vocally condemned the US policy shift, arguing that providing any regulatory leeway allowed Moscow to profit from the instability generated by its direct alliance with Tehran.
Ukraine’s leadership had been particularly unsparing in its assessment of the Treasury’s concessions. Ukrainian Ambassador to the US Olha Stefanishyna and Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha lodged formal protests, while President Volodymyr Zelensky publically warned that the loophole directly supported the Kremlin’s military spending.
Zelensky noted that during the brief waiver window, over 110 tankers operating within Russia’s maritime “shadow fleet” – carrying oil valued at an estimated $10 billion – were cleared to transact without legal or financial consequences, immediately converting those energy profits into fresh drone and missile production lines targeting Ukrainian cities.
Emerging markets left scrambling
Major global importers, most notably India and Indonesia, had intensely petitioned the White House to maintain the exemptions. With the United States maintaining a strict naval blockade on Iranian ports and the strategic Strait of Hormuz effectively locked down by active hostilities, global markets have been stripped of millions of barrels of crude per day.
For energy-vulnerable and lower-income nations, the total removal of Russian maritime volumes threatens to trigger severe fuel inflation.
However, with the US mid-term elections fast approaching in November, the Trump administration has prioritized absolute economic containment on both Moscow and Tehran, leaving non-aligned buyers to scramble for alternative, long-range overland and maritime logistics corridors.