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U.S is preparing to announce whether from Thursday it will reactivate sanctions on Venezuelan oil and gas to punish the president Nicolás Maduro for blocking the opposition in elections scheduled for July. President Joe Biden’s government is dissatisfied with the evolution of the electoral process in Venezuela since the signing of the Barbados Agreement last October.
Maduro, who is running for a third term in the July 28 elections, respected the technical part of this agreement reached with the opposition but, according to Washington, did not fulfill the condition of guaranteeing that everyone can present their candidates.
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Maduro “defended certain aspects of the Barbados agreement, including establishing an electoral calendar and inviting international observation missions,” but “at the same time was seen blocking opposition candidates,” said the State Department spokesperson, Matthew Miller. .
Chavismo’s main rival, María Corina Machado, remains disqualified and Corina Yoris, whom she nominated to replace her in the elections, was also vetoed.
“Very clear”
“We have made it very clear that if Maduro and his representatives do not fully implement what was agreed in the Barbados Agreement, we will reimpose sanctions” lifted to promote the electoral process, Miller insisted.
General license 44, which authorizes operations related to the oil and gas sector, expires this Thursday.
Venezuela’s production is around 800,000 barrels per day, after reaching a minimum in mid-2020, when it fell below 400,000, but is far from the three million it reached 15 years ago.
In total, the revenues of the state oil company PDVSA went from 3,000 million dollars in 2022 to 6,320 million dollars in 2023, according to the Venezuelan government, because the partial and temporary lifting of the embargo allowed the reestablishment of shipments to countries such as India.
Everything indicates that Maduro assumes that the United States will reimpose sanctions, despite representatives of his government and North American officials having held several meetings in recent days.
“They continue to blackmail that they will withdraw the 44 license,” Maduro said this week on one of his television programs. “We will move forward with a license, without a license, we are not a foreign colony (…) no one will stop us,” he said.
The embargo on Venezuelan oil and gas was imposed in 2019 as part of a battery of sanctions to try to bring about Maduro’s ouster after the 2018 elections, considered fraudulent by Washington.
Intermediate option
The United States has already imposed sanctions on gold, but must weigh the pros and cons when deciding whether to reverse the relaxation of the oil embargo less than seven months before the presidential election.
Migration is one of the central issues of November’s US elections and Venezuela is a red spot, with more than seven million people leaving the country since 2014, according to the UN.
Furthermore, the United States, and Europe as well, have been searching for stable energy sources since Russia invaded Ukraine.
There is a plausible intermediate scenario, according to Francisco Monaldi, director of the Latin American Energy Program at the Baker Institute at Rice University, in Texas.
One “possibility” is that the license will be “let die” and that they will subsequently “authorize licenses” to multinationals such as the French Maurel & Prom, the Spanish Repsol or the Italian Eni, because this would “keep Maduro interested” in a negotiation. considered in a meeting with foreign correspondents.
It would be along the lines of what was granted to the American giant Chevron in November 2022 to operate in Venezuela and collect outstanding crude oil debts.
“If the license is revoked there will be no political changes, but the small hope of economic recovery is reduced”, estimated Oscar Duval, president of the brokerage Rendivalores.
Venezuela had growth of 15% in 2022 and 5% in 2023 according to the government, after eight years of recession, in which GDP contracted by 80%.
The Biden government has another variable in mind: April 20th is the deadline for replacing candidates in the Venezuelan presidential elections and the opposition is racing against the clock to find a “unitary candidacy”.
So far, Chavismo has ruled out reversing the disqualifications, despite accepting a mechanism to review them, to which Machado submitted.
Source: Elcomercio
I am Jack Morton and I work in 24 News Recorder. I mostly cover world news and I have also authored 24 news recorder. I find this work highly interesting and it allows me to keep up with current events happening around the world.
