The United States has extended the deadline for concluding deals on the sale of Lukoil oil company’s foreign assets until 1 April – this follows from a document of the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the US Department of the Treasury (OFAC).
The OFAC licence allows companies to negotiate the purchase of assets and conduct operations necessary to prepare and conclude transactions with them.
Earlier, Reuters quoted sources as saying that the US was slowing down the sale of Lukoil’s foreign assets to put pressure on Russia as part of peace talks on Ukraine.
According to a Reuters interlocutor, the US Treasury Department extended the document to facilitate “an agreement that would support President Trump’s efforts to deprive Russia of the revenue it needs to support its war machine.”
The source added that any deal would require all proceeds from the sale of Lukoil assets to be frozen in an account under US jurisdiction. According to another source, the agreement could still be concluded regardless of the peace deal.
In January, it became known that the Russian oil company Lukoil had entered into an agreement to sell its foreign assets to the US investment fund Carlyle.
“Lukoil” announced its intention to sell its foreign assets after the introduction of U.S. sanctions in October 2025. The company owns three oil refineries in Europe, stakes in oil fields in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Mexico, Ghana, Egypt and Nigeria, as well as hundreds of retail petrol stations around the world, including in the US.
The Swiss company Gunvor, linked to Vladimir Putin’s friend Gennady Timchenko, initially announced its intention to buy LUKOIL’s foreign assets. However, it abandoned its plans after the US Treasury Department made it clear that it would not approve the deal, at least until the end of the hostilities being waged by Russia in Ukraine.