Lukoil to sell its international assets

Alexey Belogoryev, Research and Development Director of the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented to Business FM on why OFAC gave LUKOIL and Rosneft a one-month delay in completing operations:

— This is the standard practice of managing US foreign assets. Whenever blocking sanctions are imposed, time is given to complete asset sales, contract completion, and stock disposal, in this case it is a month.

— They won't get any money for it anyway, at least for now?

— It depends on national rules, but in general, yes, most likely, all the money earned in this way will be transferred to special accounts and frozen, similar to the practice that has been in place in Russia since 2022 with respect to foreign investors, this is in many ways a similar story. But the issue here is not the disposal of money, but how to get companies out of harm's way, which themselves are at risk of falling into the same blocking list of the United States.