LONDON (Reuters) -Britain on Friday paused sanctions that will allow Bulgaria’s Burgas refinery and related petrol stations, owned by Russia’s Lukoil, to keep doing business with companies and banks.
The UK last month announced sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, and a week later the U.S. followed suit in a bid to squeeze the financing of Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine.
Britain’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation said it had issued a licence allowing payments and economic resources to flow to and from two Bulgarian entities pertaining to existing or new contracts.
It allows companies and banks to engage in transactions with Lukoil Neftochim Burgas AD and Lukoil Bulgaria EOOD, operators of the refinery and petrol stations, as well as their subsidiaries, until February 14.
A source close to the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control told Reuters that the U.S. is expected to issue a similar licence regarding the Bulgarian entities later on Friday.
Boyko Borissov, head of the largest party in Bulgaria’s ruling coalition government, told local media that he hoped the country would secure a six-month derogation from the U.S. sanctions on Friday.
The White House and Treasury Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Bulgaria’s stored supply of gasoline and diesel were down to a matter of weeks, Assen Asenov, chairman of the state reserves agency, told Bulgaria’s BTA news agency this week.
(Reporting by Robert Harvey and Sam Tabahriti in London; editing by Sarah Young and Jason Neely)
