Biden Admin Hints at More Sanctions Relief for Venezuela After Election Talks Disaster

U.S. acting ambassador to Colombia and the head of the Venezuelan Affairs Unit (VAU) in Bogotá, Francisco Palmieri, said on Monday that the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden is, once again, willing to ease sanctions on Venezuela’s socialist regime.

Such action would be contingent on dictator Nicolás Maduro taking “meaningful steps” towards implementing a “free and fair” electoral agreement, an offer that appears to disregard that the regime has repeatedly violated and failed to uphold similar deals in the past year.

“Today, I spoke with U.S. companies about sanctions relief. Our policy seeks to encourage inclusive and competitive elections. We remain open to responding positively to meaningful steps toward full implementation of the Barbados Agreement,” a message published on social media from the U.S. Embassy in Venezuela and signed by Palmieri read.

Representatives of the Maduro regime and the Venezuelan opposition met in Barbados in October under the observation of the Biden Administration and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

After a series of negotiations, both sides signed a document known as the “Barbados Agreement,” which tethered the Maduro regime to a series of vague commitments meant to establish the conditions that would lead to holding a “free and fair” presidential election in Venezuela sometime during the second half of 2024.

As a reward for those promises, Biden issued the Maduro regime a broad oil and gas sanctions relief package in October 2023 that allowed the rogue socialist regime to once again freely sell Venezuelan oil in U.S. and international markets for six months. The package briefly restored the Maduro regime’s main source of revenue and allowed it to broker deals with other countries — such as India, China, Spain, and France — leading to an upsurge in Venezuela’s oil output. Venezuela’s oil production presently remains diminished from its historic output records after over two decades of socialist mismanagement brought the infrastructure of Venezuela’s oil industry and refineries to a state of near-complete ruin.

The sanctions relief package temporarily halted sanctions on the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA imposed during the administration of former President Donald Trump in 2019 — issued in response to the Maduro regime’s years of human rights violations against political dissidents.

Maduro failed to uphold the Barbados Agreement, repeatedly violating it until finally walking away from it entirely. The dictator later announced the implementation of something he called the “Caracas Agreement,” which calls for an upcoming sham presidential election on July 28, 2024. María Corina Machado, the opposition’s frontrunner candidate, is unable to run in that election, as the regime banned her from holding public office for denouncing its human rights abuses.

Maduro will run in October against Edmundo González Urrutia, a little-known 74-year-old former ambassador and the only opposition candidate successfully allowed to register as a candidate. González’s campaign was originally intended to be a “placeholder” pending an eventual Machado candidacy.

The July 28 “election” will also see Maduro run against eight other “opposition” candidates and/or pre-approved “rivals.”

The Biden Administration restored the sanctions on Maduro at the end of its six-month period on April 18. As a result, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued a currently active license that gives U.S. companies a 45-day time frame to wind down operations involving PDVSA, ending on May 31, 2024. U.S. companies, however, may continue to engage in business dealings with PDVSA provided they possess a corresponding license from the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

The Biden Administration granted California-based Chevron one such license in November 2022, allowing the company to resume its oil operations in Venezuela and sell Venezuelan oil in U.S. markets since then.

Following the reinstatement of the oil and gas sanctions, OFAC issued the required license to Maurel & Prom (M&P), allowing the French oil company to continue its operations in Venezuela.

Similarly, India’s Reliance Industries reportedly submitted a request to the United States on Monday for an authorization license that allows Reliance to import crude oil from Venezuela. Reliance was the second-largest individual buyer of Venezuelan crude oil before the imposition of sanctions on PDVSA in 2019.

LNG Energy Group, a Canada-based company owned by Texas businessman Rodney Lewis, announced in late April that it signed a deal with PDVSA for the rehabilitation of five of its rundown onshore oil fields.

The Canadian company noted in a statement that the deal was signed within the terms of the Biden Administration’s sanctions relief package but stressed that it “intends to operate in full compliance with the applicable sanctions regimes.”

The White House confirmed in April that U.S. representatives met with representatives of the Maduro regime days before the expiration of the sanctions relief package to discuss the Biden Administration’s “concerns” over Venezuela’s electoral process. The confirmation was issued in response to the Maduro regime accusing the United States of failing to “comply with the agreed-upon schedule for lifting sanctions.”

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.