PDVSA President and Oil Minister Manuel Quevedo has dismissed US sanctions on the assets of Citgo, a US-based subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil and gas giant PDVSA as “a robbery” that is being accomplished with the help of the “treacherous action of the Venezuelan opposition”.
The United States has made another attempt to choke off oil-rich, cash-poor Venezuela, having slapped sanctions on the state-owned oil company PDVSA.
Once Hugo Chavez took office in 1999, he bolstered control of the oil industry, largely focusing on complying with OPEC regulations. The then-president’s policies saw oil prices skyrocket while the Venezuelan government spent more than it received. Washington has imposed stringent restrictions on PDVSA even though one third of Venezuelan oil is processed in US refineries, leaving them to seek alternative sources of heavy crude.
According to Bloomberg, refiners in Louisiana and Texas would be greatly affected by the recently-announced sanctions, and the hardest-hit would be PDVSA’s US-based refining arm, Citgo Petroleum Corp., which is Caracas’s main source of foreign income.
Venezuela exports some 500,000 barrels of oil to the US, mostly to Citgo and refineries owned by Valero Energy Corp and Chevron Corp; Citgo imported the most Venezuelan crude oil in the first ten months of 2018, followed by Texas-based Valero and California-based Chevron.
“They are not allowing tankers bound for Valero, Citgo and Chevron to leave Venezuelan ports if not prepaid”, a PDVSA source told Reuters.
However, the newly-announced sanctions may jeopardise foreign investments in Venezuela’s oil industry, including those from China, Russia and India.
Over the decade ending in 2016, Beijing loaned Caracas some $62 billion, most of which the Latin American country could repay with crude. Maduro said last September that he could count on China as an ally to survive an “economic war” unleashed by Washington.Reacting to the unilateral restrictions, China vowed to continue cooperating with Venezuela.
Russia, for its part, has given Venezuela $17 billion in loans and investments, and in December 2018 the two governments clinched a new deal in which Moscow will invest $6 billion in Caracas’s oil and gold sectors.
India also continues to be one of the main buyers of Caracas’s crude despite the ongoing political crisis in the country. Financial Express cited diplomatic sources as saying that Indian companies purchase over 400,000 barrels of oil per day.
During a press conference on Monday, Mnuchin revealed that some countries may obtain some sort of waivers to adjust to the situation, although he did not provide any details:
“We have also issued general licenses to ensure that certain European and Caribbean countries can make an orderly transition”, he said.
In addition, US companies will be allowed to continue to purchase Venezuelan oil, but the payments must be held in an account that cannot be accessed by the Maduro government.
“If the people in Venezuela want to continue to sell us oil, as long as that money goes into blocked accounts, we’ll continue to take it. Otherwise we will not be buying it”, Mnuchin noted.
US National Security Adviser John Bolton and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced on Monday that the US had blocked all of PDVSA’s assets under its jurisdiction and banned deals with the company. Bolton also stated that Washington was freezing $7 billion worth of PDVSA’s assets, while another $11 billion will be lost in terms of oil deliveries.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has accused the US of attempting to “steal” Citgo and branded the new sanctions targeting PDVSA illegal.
While Maduro has accused the US of orchestrating a coup by recognising self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaido as the legitimate head of the country, this is not the first time that Washington has suggested that political change in Venezuela would be “easiest” if Maduro chose to step aside.
Last February, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who used to be the CEO ExxonMobil, floated a potential military coup in Venezuela.
“In the history of Venezuela and South American countries, it is often times that the military is the agent of change when things are so bad and the leadership can no longer serve the people. I think there will be a change. We want it to be a peaceful change. Peaceful transitions, peaceful regime change, is always better than the alternative”.
Guaido has been recognised as Venezuela’s interim president by a host of South American countries, the US, Canada, and Israel, while a number of European nations have announced their intention to follow suit. In the meantime, Russia, China, Turkey, Cuba, Bolivia, Iran, El Salvador, and Nicaragua are supporting the legitimately elected Maduro.