As the sanctions pile up on Russia, the Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) announced new sanctions yesterday. Of course, what exactly is covered by the sanctions isn’t quite clear, but as they say on birthdays and in diplomacy, it’s the thought that counts.

The sanctions were announced on the BIS website but were not accompanied by any Federal Register notices or EAR amendments. Indeed, the announcement deals with future sanctions at an unspecified date on a broad, but not clearly defined, category of goods:

BIS will institute a policy denying export, reexport or foreign transfer of certain items for use in Russia’s energy sector that may be used for exploration or production from deepwater, Arctic offshore, or shale projects that have the potential to produce oil.

Although what this means is not entirely clear, several things can be fairly safely assumed. First, the sanctions will target goods already on the Commerce Control List inasmuch it talks about a policy denying export and therefore seems to target goods for which licenses would currently be required. Second, and as a corollary to the first, it does not appear that new items will be added to the CCL as part of these new sanctions. Third, the items targeted will be a subset of those items currently requiring licenses and not all items on the CCL requiring licenses. This is analogous to previous BIS sanctions on Russia which covered not all items on the CCL but those that required licenses to Russia and which were “high technology items … that contribute to Russia’s military capabilities.”

The rub of course is figuring out how to define the subset of CCL items controlled for export to Russia that “may be used for exploration of production” of oil.   I suppose that clearly excludes some items on the CCL, like electric chairs (ECCN 0A981.b) and African Swine Fever virus (ECCN 1C352.a.1), but everything else is probably up for grabs, particularly given that we are talking about items that “may be used” for oil exploration. Fortunately, this is announcement deals with a denial policy that “BIS will institute,” so we can all hope that when the policy goes into force there will be some itemization of the ECCNs involved.

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