With the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the response by the west having altered the dynamics of the global oil supplies industry, there is speculation that Washington’s political posture in relation to oil-rich Venezuela may encounter something of a shift in the period ahead.
Venezuela’s oil industry has long been ‘under the cosh’ from the United States, the latter’s main weapon in its fight to remove what it says is an illegal government in Venezuela. Harsh sanctions targeting the administration of President Nicolás Maduro have drastically dried up that country’s oil exports. The Ukraine invasion, however, and the efforts by the western alliance to put a squeeze on Russian oil exports has raised the issue of options to supplies from Russia, the single largest oil supplier in the world.
Re-enter Venezuela into a picture in which the Biden administration dare not cast aside the strategic importance which Caracas occupies in such moves as the west might make seek to compensate for prohibiting Russian oil exports to the USA and Europe.
No sooner had the equation become clear, however, than Venezuelan opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, rushed to register his strong opposition to any moves by the Biden administration to either ease or remove the existing sanctions on Venezuelan oil with Maduro still holding office.
Even before the likelihood of such an eventuality arose, however, Guaidó had been ‘back-footed’ on account of the sidelining of Venezuela’s opposition from bilateral talks between Washington and the Maduro administration. Guaidó’s preference is for linking any easing of sanctions against the Maduro administration with political concessions to the opposition which he leads.
Whether Venezuela’s de facto opposition leader will get his way, however, is unclear, given that Venezuela, even under Maduro, has become a possible port of call for US officials busy casting around to find energy supplies worldwide that can help replace Russian oil and gas as buyers seek to steer clear of Russia’s imports over its invasion of Ukraine.
Significantly, earlier this month, officials from Washington sat down with President Maduro in Caracas for the first bilateral talks between the two countries in several years.
Nor does Guaidó’s lobby appear to find favour with US oil companies reportedly anxious to return to Venezuela in order to secure access to the country’s oil as compensation for what, reportedly, are billions of dollars in unpaid debts for work done in the country’s oil and gas industry by companies like Chevron Corp, ENI SpA, and Repsol.
What the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the push among western nations to place an embargo on Russian oil supplies has done, is to reportedly pit two factions in the Biden administration against each other; one seeking to double down on political and economic pressure against the Maduro administration and the other, reportedly, seeking a shift from the hard line initiated during the Trump administration that effectively seeks to use pressures against Venezuela’s oil sector to secure political change.
