OFAC's General License 134B expires 12:01 a.m. EDT Friday May 16 — T-11 from Tuesday. The license authorizes Russia-origin crude oil and petroleum products loaded on vessels on or before April 17 to clear ports through that window; it excludes any transactions involving Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Crimea, Donetsk, or Luhansk. [1] Eighteen days since OFAC posted it, no member of Congress has filed a counter-amendment to extend, and no Senate floor vote has been scheduled to force the question.

The paper's Treasury General License 134B confirms May 16 12:01 EDT expiry carried the calendar. The Tuesday register is the silence. Treasury Secretary Bessent's April 14 line — "will not be renewing" — has not been contradicted by any visible Treasury action since. The absence of a 134C extension license, the absence of a Senate counter-vote, and OFAC's parallel "Economic Fury" tightening on the Iranian Shamkhani shipping network — sanctioned April 16, the day before 134B was posted — together describe a clean-cliff posture Treasury has chosen to hold. [2]

The cliff sits inside Hormuz operating tension. Project Freedom Day 1 produced an Iranian drone strike on the Fujairah bypass and a UAE missile interception. The IRGC's 30-day clock is running concurrently. GL 134B's expiry on May 16 is therefore one of three sovereign decisions pricing themselves through the same window: the clean-cliff on Russian-origin oil already at sea, the IRGC's blockade-decision horizon, and the Aramco Q1 print on May 10 that documents the war-quarter pricing the cartel will recalibrate 2027 quotas against. The Urals discount against Brent has widened from $9.20 on April 25 to about $11.40 by the weekend as buyers price in cliff risk; sanctions-Twitter is handicapping hard expiry at roughly 60 percent. The Lukoil retail-station carve-out under GL 128B remains separate and unextended-as-of-Tuesday. [3]

The cliff is May 16 at 12:01 a.m. The decision deadline is the close on Friday May 15.

-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco