For more than a year, a little-known American oil company, whose founders include a decorated former high-ranking Delta Force officer, has been pumping, refining and exporting oil from Syria’s Deir al-Zour oil fields in the country’s Kurdish-controlled northeast under a special license granted by the Trump administration that exempted it from sanctions.

On Wednesday, the Biden administration decided it would not renew the waiver that allowed Delta Crescent Energy, a firm with connections high up in the Trump administration, to exploit the oil resources of the U.S.-protected Kurdish region, according to the Associated Press, citing a U.S. official “familiar with the decision.”

Since the company began its operations to modernize oil production at Deir al-Zour in April 2020, the oil, exported quietly through neighboring northern Iraq and Turkey, has brought in billions of dollars, providing the main source of revenue for the self-declared autonomous region and its five…