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For more than a year, a little-known American oil company, whose founders include a decorated former high-ranking Delta Force officer, has been developing and modernizing 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 the firm, Delta Crescent Energy, 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.”

The company began its operations to modernize oil production at Deir al-Zour in April 2020 while the governing Syrian Kurdish authority arranged to export crude through neighboring northern Iraq and from the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr, according to two sources familiar with the company's operations. Earlier this year, Syrian Kurdish officials signed two oil sales contracts worth a t…