REALLY? How about boosting domestic production.

WASHINGTON—The U.S. said it would allow Chevron Corp. CVX -0.29%decrease; red down pointing triangle to resume pumping oil from its Venezuelan oil fields after President Nicolás Maduro’s government and an opposition coalition agreed to implement an estimated $3 billion humanitarian relief program and continue dialogue in Mexico City on efforts to hold free and fair elections.

Following the Norwegian-brokered agreement signed in Mexico City, the Biden administration granted a license to Chevron that allows the California-based oil company to return to its oil fields in joint ventures with the Venezuela national oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela SA. The new license, granted by the Treasury Department, permits Chevron to pump Venezuelan oil for the first time in years.

Biden administration officials said the license prohibits PdVSA from receiving profits from Chevron’s oil sales. The officials said the U.S. is prepared to revoke or amend the license, which will be in effect for six months, at any time if Venezuela doesn’t negotiate in good faith.


Venezuela produces some 700,000 barrels of oil a day, compared with more than 3 million in the 1990s.
PHOTO: ISAAC URRUTIA/REUTERS
“If Maduro again tries to use these negotiations to buy time to further consolidate his criminal dictatorship, the United States and our international partners must snap back the full force of our sanctions,” said Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The U.S. policy shift could signal an opening for other oil companies to resume their business in Venezuela two years after the Trump administration clamped down on Chevron and other companies’ activities there as part of a maximum-pressure campaign meant to oust the government led by Mr. Maduro. The Treasury Department action didn’t say how non-U.S. oil companies might re-engage with Venezuela.

Venezuela produces some 700,000 barrels of oil a day, compared with more than 3 million barrels a day in the 1990s. Some analysts said Venezuela could hit 1 million barrels a day in the medium term, a modest increment reflecting the dilapidated state of the country’s state-led oil industry.

Some Republican lawmakers criticized the Biden administration’s decision to clear the way for Chevron to pump more oil in Venezuela. “The Biden administration should allow American energy producers to unleash DOMESTIC production instead of begging dictators for oil,” Rep. Claudia Tenney (R., N.Y.) wrote on Twitter.

Biden administration officials said the decision to issue the license wasn’t a response to oil prices, which have been a major concern for President Biden and his top advisers in recent months as they seek to tackle inflation. “This is about the regime taking the steps needed to support the restoration of democracy in Venezuela,” one of the officials said.

The Wall Street Journal reported in October that the Biden administration was preparing to scale down sanctions on Venezuela’s regime to allow Chevron to resume pumping oil there.


Jorge Rodriguez led the Venezuelan delegation in the talks in Mexico City, where an agreement was signed.
PHOTO: HENRY ROMERO/REUTERS
Under the new license, profits from the sale of oil will go toward repaying hundreds of millions of dollars in debt owed to Chevron by PdVSA, administration officials said. The U.S. will require that Chevron report details of its financial operations to ensure transparency, they said.

Chevron spokesman Ray Fohr said the new license allows the company to commercialize the oil currently being produced at its joint-venture assets. He said the company will conduct its business in compliance within the current framework.

The license prohibits Chevron from paying taxes and royalties to the Venezuelan government, which surprised some experts. They had been expecting that direct revenue would encourage PdVSA to reroute oil cargoes away from obscure export channels, mostly to Chinese buyers at a steep discount, which Venezuela has relied on for years to skirt sanctions.

“If this is the case, Maduro doesn’t have significant incentives to allow that many cargoes of Chevron to go out,” said Francisco Monaldi, director of the Latin America Energy Program at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. Sending oil to China, even at a heavy discount, would be better for Caracas than only paying debt to Chevron, he said.

The limited scope of the Chevron license is seen as a way to ensure that Mr. Maduro stays the course on negotiations. “Rather than fully opening the door for Venezuelan oil to flow to the U.S. market immediately, what the license proposes is a normalization path that is likely contingent on concessions from the Maduro regime on the political and human-rights front,” said Luisa Palacios, senior research scholar at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy.

The license allows Venezuelan oil back into the U.S., historically its largest market, but only if the oil from the PdVSA-Chevron joint ventures is first sold to Chevron and doesn’t authorize exports from the ventures “to any jurisdiction other than the United States,” which appears to restrict PdVSA’s own share of the sales to the U.S. market, said Mr. Monaldi.



The license prohibits transactions involving goods and services from Iran, a U.S.-sanctioned oil producer that has helped Venezuela overcome sanctions in recent years. It blocks dealings with Venezuelan entities owned or controlled by Western-sanctioned Russia, which has played a role in Venezuela’s oil industry.

Jorge Rodriguez, the head of Venezuela’s Congress as well as the government’s delegation to the Mexico City talks, declined to comment on the issuance of the Chevron license.

Freddy Guevara, a member of the opposition coalition’s delegation, said the estimated $3 billion in frozen funds intended for humanitarian relief and infrastructure projects in Venezuela would be administered by the United Nations. He cautioned that it would take time to implement the program fully. “It begins now, but the time period is up to three years,” he said.

The Venezuelan state funds frozen in overseas banks by sanctions are expected to be used to alleviate the country’s health, food and electric-power crises in part by building infrastructure for electricity and water-treatment needs. “Not one dollar will go to the vaults of the regime,” Mr. Guevara said.

Chevron plans to restore lost output as it performs maintenance and other essential work, but it won’t attempt major work that would require new investments in the country’s oil fields until debts of $4.2 billion are repaid. That could take about two to three years depending on oil-market conditions, according to people familiar with the matter.

PdVSA owes Chevron and other joint-venture partners their shares of more than two years of revenue from oil sales, after the 2020 U.S. sanctions barred the Venezuelan company from paying its partners, one of the people said. The license would allow Chevron to collect its share of dividends from its joint ventures such as Petropiar, in which Chevron is a 30% partner.

Analysts said the new agreement raises expectations that will take time and work to fulfill. “Ensuring the success of talks won’t be easy, but it’s clear that offering gradual sanctions relief like this in order to incentivize agreements is the only way forward. It’s a Champagne-popping moment for the negotiators, but much more work remains to be done,” said Geoff Ramsey, Venezuela director at the Washington Office on Latin America.

José de Córdoba and Ginette Gonzalez contributed to this article.

Write to Collin Eaton at collin.eaton@wsj.com and Andrew Restuccia at andrew.restuccia@wsj.com

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
REALLY? How about boosting domestic production.

False dillema logical fallacy as it's not an either or situation. All of the US majors are drilling like mad in TX and NM, and all of the US majors have international divisions that are drilling like mad in rest of world.

Getting Venezuela up and running is much different skill set than West Texas. Venezuela is a heavy crude and one of the toughest to produce reservoirs in the world, and West Texas' crude is light and mostly sweet.

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
REALLY? How about boosting domestic production.

False dillema logical fallacy as it's not an either or situation. All of the US majors are drilling like mad in TX and NM, and all of the US majors have international divisions that are drilling like mad in rest of world.

Getting Venezuela up and running is much different skill set than West Texas. Venezuela is a heavy crude and one of the toughest to produce reservoirs in the world, and West Texas' crude is light and mostly sweet.

Exactly this. More oil production is good, and Venezuelan heavy crude will almost exclusively be refined in Texas, as most of the refineries that can handle that crude in the western hemisphere are located there.

quote:

False dillema logical fallacy as it's not an either or situation. All of the US majors are drilling like mad in TX and NM, and all of the US majors have international divisions that are drilling like mad in rest of world.

^^^^^^^^^^^^
You should know this is your area. I guess I do not like making deals with dictators. If Keystone had not been stopped would we be in this position?

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:

quote:

False dillema logical fallacy as it's not an either or situation. All of the US majors are drilling like mad in TX and NM, and all of the US majors have international divisions that are drilling like mad in rest of world.

^^^^^^^^^^^^
You should know this is your area. I guess I do not like making deals with dictators. If Keystone had not been stopped would we be in this position?

Yes.

Venezuela nationalized (aka stole) many Western o&g companies assets, and Western o&g companies have been playing the long game to get the assets back. Everybody knew the production would drop off drastically after kicking out Western o&g companies, and one day the day would come to return with appropriate risk management.

^^^^^^^^^^
Appreciate the response. Thanks

"Appropriate risk management" - how is Chevron (or anyone) intending to prevent a bait-and-switch? You know, get everything running again, just to have the next junta seize it again?

That's a serious question, not me poking holes.

You’re asking the multibillion dollar question but unfortunately it is outside my area of expertise. That’s some heady geopolitics, finance, and contract strategy.

I’ve heard about a few strategies that have worked in the 3rd world in the past but no idea if they’d work now in Venezuela:

Make the 3rd world country put up collateral in the 1st world. The western o&g companies that used this strategy originally in Venezuela didn’t get burnt as bad when they later nationalized Venezuela’s o&g.

Make the 3rd world country secure loans through the world bank which comes with a mountain of strings (eg % of revenue goes to building hospitals and schools)

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Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity

DISCLAIMER: These are the author's own personal views and do not represent the views of the author's employer.

Good info in this thread. Thanks.

It will take Chevron about a year to restart down there. The infrastructure from what's left is a mess.

One of the worst parts, outside companies (the USA basically) will have to spend their money to rebuild this broken down system. When it's over, whenever that is, we walk away, can't take it back out.
That will likely mean that enemies like China will come in behind us and take advantage of that investment, supporting the Maduro regime.
The Chinese government isn't stupid, just evil.

I likely do not understand such shenanigans but why would a company need permission from our government to do work in a foreign country?

quote:

Originally posted by captain127:
why would a company need permission from our government to do work in a foreign country?

US government sanctions against Venezuela apply to US based corporations.

US government also has sanctions against North Korea, Syria, Iran, and Russia.