The Joe Biden administration has denied claims its decision to not renew a sanctions waiver for an American energy company that was planning to extract and market oil in Kurdish-controlled northeastern Syria is connected to efforts to get Russia to maintain cross-border humanitarian aid corridors to the war-stricken country.

The waiver for Delta Crescent Energy expired in May and was not renewed, as first reported by Al-Monitor a year after it was granted by the Donald Trump administration, which said it was keeping some US troops in northeast Syria to “keep” and “secure" the oil. The Biden administration says it is staying in northeast Syria “for the people” and “not for the oil.” Syria is under heavy sanctions by the United States, including the 2017 Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) and its related authorities, Executive Order (EO) 13894 from October 14, 2019, and the 2019 Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act (Caesar Act) against the Assad regime and its patrons.

However, there have been claims that the underlying cause for canceling Delta Crescent Energy’s license is to appease Russia ahead of July 10, when the UN Security Council’s mandate for delivering aid via the Bab al-Hawa border crossing from Turkey to rebel-held northwestern Syria expires. Russia is threatening to wield its veto power at the Security Council to shut what is the last remaining cross-border aid channel down. This is in keeping with its demands that all humanitarian assistance be channeled via the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, whose full authority Moscow is pushing to restore.

Senior officials in the Biden administration deny the claims. They say the United States is committed to maintaining its presence in northeast Syria in order to ensure the lasting defeat of the Islamic State (IS), which is seeking to re-establish a presence after its territorial defeat by the US-led coalition and its Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in 2019.