The U.S. Treasury Department announced a six-month license allowing oil giant Chevron to produce and export oil from Venezuela.
The United States sanctioned Venezuela under the regime of President Nicolás Maduro, greatly impacting the country’s oil market and overall economy. Under Maduro, the country has operated under what some opponents describe as a dictatorship. The department claims its loosening of sanctions is a response to Maduro and Venezuela resuming humanitarian talks with his political opponents.
The license authorizes Chevron to resume natural resource extraction in Venezuela in a limited capacity. According to a press release Saturday from the Treasury Department: “This action reflects longstanding U.S. policy to provide targeted sanctions relief based on concrete steps that alleviate the suffering of the Venezuelan people and support the restoration of democracy.”
Petróleos de Venezuela, Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, will be restricted from profiting off oil sales by Chevron.
The move to open up the oil supply from Venezuela to the U.S. market ahead of potential new sanctions against Russia by the European Union. The European Commission is expected to trigger new sanctions against Russian energy on Dec. 5. It will include a ban on all Russian seaborne crude oil and petroleum products, which is about 90% of Europe’s Russian oil imports.
According to Politico, a senior administration official said the easing of sanctions against Venezuela is not in response to oil prices.
“This action is not being taken in response to energy prices, this is a limited license. As we have said in the past, this is about the regime taking the steps needed to support the restoration of democracy in Venezuela,” the official said.
Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, said the United States would not hesitate to re-institute sanctions should Maduro fall short on his part of negotiations. The six month license can be revoked at any time.
Venezuela produces about 300 billion barrels of oil per day. It has one of the largest oil reserves in the world.
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demoncrats love themselves a dictator and the more evil he is the more love for him they have!
joe biden thinks he is chancelor of americastan.
Never let a crisis go to waste, and if there are none just create more to “Think and get rich.” Just how much is 10% of the billions in oil revenue the Venezuelans will kick back to his crime family? Can someone with authority just follow the money? Kickbacks are illegal in domestic oil production unless hidden in the form of campaign or party donations. Greedy Joe keeps coming up with ways to cut out the middleman by dealing with foreign oil producers like Ukrainian Burisma, Putin and Iran and Venezula,,,,dictators of a feather that always stick together when it comes to feathering their own nest first, while they use their media newspapers to line their very nests they foul that belong in cages, if not prisons, not free roaming. By Joe using the influence of his party, in essence he is even cheating them out of their fair share. When the impeachments arrive, he will sell out his party to save himself and his family.
Shoring up oppressive regimes and foreigh dictators while our own languish without jobs or enough energy. All in the name of climate change which they really can’t define, hotter or cooler, two choices. And the advocates of all this? They must believe there really is a sucker born every minute. Al Gore and John Kerry have not cut back on lifestyles that can polute in a couple of days what it takes the rest of us a year, yet that want us to cut back MORE! And poor, sweet, Greta, the poster child left without a future, it was never about the climate but about the rise of socialism and the destruction of capitalism; she sure snookered a lot of people (I always thought something didn’t seem quite right, now I know).
The point of progressives is to destroy the reliable energy industries and replace them with . . . .?
YET again, its “LET ANOTHER country do it, but NEVER LET the USA do it for itself”…