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(Bloomberg) — The Trump administration issued a general license expanding the ability of oil companies to operate in Venezuela, marking a significant step to ease sanctions under the new US-backed leadership in Caracas.
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The license from the US Treasury Department covers a variety of activities that could accelerate Venezuelan crude flows, including exporting, selling, storing and refining the country’s oil.
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It comes after Venezuelan lawmakers approved a historic reform of the country’s hydrocarbons policy, which some US oil executives had described as essential to launch operations there.
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The move reflects the Trump administration’s desire to get Venezuela’s economy moving and normalizing rapidly, helping to build momentum after the capture of former President Nicolás Maduro, a person familiar with the matter said.
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The license covers a range of mid and downstream operations, including loading oil onto tankers as well as exporting, marketing and transporting it. It also authorizes the refining of Venezuelan crude by established US entities and “commercially reasonable” payments in the form of physical swaps of crude oil, diluents or refined petroleum products.
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Chevron Corp. currently produces oil in Venezuela under a special US license.
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The license is key to start gradually increasing crude flows from Venezuela where energy infrastructure has decayed amid years of underinvestment and corruption.
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The Trump administration plans to indefinitely control future sales of Venezuelan oil and hold the proceeds in US accounts. The trading giants Vitol Group and Trafigura Group have already selling Venezuelan crude that’s been stuck in storage because of the US blockade that began in the weeks before Maduro’s capture.
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Venezuela Acting President Delcy Rodriguez has been courting foreign oil companies with offers of more generous fiscal terms, less red tape and allowing the private sector to control much of the nation’s key industry.
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—With assistance from Lucia Kassai.
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English (US)