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.