The Office of Foreign Assets Control's General License 134B authorizes ancillary services — financial, insurance, brokerage, and certain transportation — for Russian-origin crude and petroleum products loaded on or before April 17, 2026 and unloaded by 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on Saturday, May 16, 2026. [1] The paper named the renewal on April 29. Sunday is the day the loaded-on-or-before clause becomes the operative text.

The mechanics matter because they are the difference between a hard sanctions deadline and a soft one. Cargo loaded on April 17 has thirty days to find a port; cargo loaded April 18 must clear under a different license or face secondary-sanctions exposure. The loaded-on-or-before language is the Kremlin's working window for clean documentation — and Russian shadow-fleet operators have used April to backdate manifests, which OFAC has not publicly addressed.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said this week there would be "no renewal of waivers for Iranian and Russian oil imports." [2] The line was widely circulated. The renewal Bessent ruled out is also the renewal he extended six days earlier. The administration's posture is the contradiction: a public no, a private yes, a documentary instrument that says May 16. The Saudi Gazette reported Bessent had floated additional Russian shipments to ease "a temporary global supply shortage" — language that does not survive the same week's "no renewal" claim.

The license collides with the same week's Treasury teapot-refinery advisory and the Hengli Singapore restructure echo. Russian oil is a Treasury problem in two registers — sanctions enforcement and crude-supply management — and the document that reconciles them is the one with the May 16 timestamp. The deadline arrives Saturday. The next license is the test.

-- KATYA VOLKOV, Moscow