WASHINGTON: The Trump administration broadly eased sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry on Thursday as it seeks to expand production there after US forces ousted the South American country’s President Nicolas Maduro early this month.
The US Treasury authorised transactions involving the government of Venezuela and state oil company PDVSA that are “ordinarily incident and necessary to the lifting, exportation, reexportation, sale, resale, supply, storage, marketing, purchase, delivery, or transportation of Venezuelan-origin oil, including the refining of such oil, by an established US entity.”
The decision to issue a broad, general license marks a pronounced shift from a previous strategy of granting individual exemptions to sanctions for companies seeking to do business in the country. During President Donald Trump’s first administration The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated Venezuela’s entire energy industry as subject to US sanctions in 2019 after Maduro’s first re-election, which Washington did not recognise.