By David Lawder and Timothy Gardner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The administration of President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the wind-down of a license allowing energy transactions with Russian financial institutions expired this week, raising pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to come to a peace agreement over Ukraine.
A Treasury spokesperson said that General License 8L expired as scheduled at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Wednesday.
The administration of President Joe Biden had issued the wind-down on January 10 as part of its toughest sanctions against Russia’s oil and gas revenues. It coordinated the effort with then President-elect Donald Trump’s team to improve his and Ukraine’s negotiating position as part of any peace talks.
The wind-down allowed time to clear remaining transactions ahead of the energy financing deals with Russian banks, including Sberbank, VTB and the Central Bank of the Russian Federation. Letting it expire means the Russian banks now are blocked from accessing U.S. payment systems.
The Biden administration issued the license on energy transactions in a sanctions package shortly after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine to prevent a spike in global oil prices.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has criticized Biden’s sanctions on Russia as being ineffective because the effort was preoccupied with keeping oil prices low.
The Trump administration “remains focused on ending the fighting and fostering negotiations to end the war,” the Treasury spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “We continue to implement our sanctions, which remain one of the levers to facilitate these goals.”
The sanctions also banned dollar transactions with Russian energy firms Gazprom Neft and Surneftegas as well as 183 vessels that have shipped Russian oil, including many in the so-called shadow fleet of aging tankers operated by non-Western companies.
ClearView Energy Partners, an energy policy research group, has said the expiry of the license, could potentially complicate and maybe halt some third countries’ petroleum purchases.
The U.S. Treasury Department is looking at possible sanctions on Russian oil majors and oilfield service companies, a source familiar with the matter said last week, deepening steps already taken by Biden.
(Reporting by David Lawder and Timothy Gardner; Editing by Leslie Adler, Diane Craft and Michael Perry)
