The United States has announced that it will not renew the oil and gas licenses that it had granted to Venezuela in exchange for a democratic opening of the country.
Washington had given until April for Chavismo to retract the veto to run for the presidential elections against María Corina Machado, the main opposition figure, but the forcefulness with which President Nicolás Maduro and his associates have shown themselves regarding the Disqualification has led the State Department to announce this Tuesday that the truce that both countries had agreed upon is buried.
The door that White House spokesman John Kirby had opened to continue in negotiations by delaying a final decision to April has closed.
The game has crashed again.
On April 18, the authorizations given to oil companies to negotiate with Venezuela will expire and the expectations that this generated in the sector that they could be extended - in view of the contractions that the world energy market is experiencing with two wars in progress - have reached their ceiling. after the response that Washington has given.
Venezuela has responded immediately to denounce what it considers blackmail.
It responds in the same terms of transaction in which the negotiation of an electoral solution to the long political crisis in the South American country has been proposed.
Vice President Delcy Rodríguez warned that the migrant deportation flights that were implemented from the United States to Caracas will be suspended, to relieve internal pressure on the Joe Biden Administration due to the massive arrival of Venezuelan citizens and other nationalities to its borders in search of of opportunities.
“If they take the wrong step of intensifying economic aggression against Venezuela, at the request of the extremist lackeys in the country, as of February 13, repatriation flights for Venezuelan migrants would be immediately revoked, and any mechanism would be reviewed. of existing cooperation as a countermeasure against the deliberate attempt to hit the Venezuelan oil and gas industry,” the official responded in a reply message to State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller.
The date of February 13 is because that day, according to an update from the US Treasury, the first licenses in relation to transactions with Venezuelan gold will become void.
The statement released by the Venezuelan authorities in response to the US announcement.
For the United States, “the actions of Nicolás Maduro and his representatives, including the arrest of members of the opposition” and “the prohibition of candidates from competing in this year's presidential elections,” are inconsistent with the agreements signed in Barbados in October past.
In the document they clarify that General License 44, which since last November has provided relief to the Venezuelan oil and gas sector, "in the absence of progress between Maduro and his representatives and the opposition Unitary Platform" will not be renewed when it expires in two months and half.
Washington urges a return to the Barbados agreements that Chavismo claims to comply with and the opposition denounces that they have been completely violated.
“We will continue to work with the international community and all peaceful democratic actors across the political spectrum in Venezuela and will take advantage of the mechanisms at our disposal to encourage a return to the principles of the Barbados agreement,” Washington reiterates.
Venezuela has decided to move forward towards elections tailored to its needs, in which it has left behind the main candidate chosen in the primaries, the one who leads the polls by far.
Now she is encouraging nominations from other minority sectors—sometimes allied to Chavismo—who, with the precarious support they maintain, could defeat.
The head of Parliament, Jorge Rodríguez, has said that next week the date for the elections will be set and the schedule will be defined.
Chavismo will not reverse Machado's disqualification, considered rigged by specialists and from which she could not even defend herself in a trial.
Venezuelan migrants are screened before boarding a repatriation flight from Texas, in October 2023.DANIEL BECERRIL (REUTERS)
The Venezuelan conflict is a dog chasing its tail.
Once again, after a process in which there were some movements on the board, the situation is once again close to the stalemate in which it has been before, with the risk that the direct dialogue that Washington and Caracas had achieved, then of the secret talks in Doha, is closed again.
"The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela repudiates the most recent attempts at blackmail and interference in its internal affairs by the Government of the United States of America, which constitute an ultimatum against the entire Venezuelan society and, through coercion and threat, seeks to impose the coup, ignoring the institutions of the Republic, applying new coercive measures, and destabilizing the Venezuelan economy and the well-being of its people,” said Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil.
Once partial objectives such as the handover of Alex Saab and the temporary relief of sanctions have been achieved, Chavismo has given some diffuse concessions to the opposition and has once again entrenched itself.
Since sectoral sanctions were imposed in 2019, the Venezuelan Government has learned to navigate amid the siege imposed by the United States.
It was Saab, precisely, who became the Government's financial operator in that context until in 2020 he was arrested in Cape Verde and then extradited to the United States.
The president of PDVSA, Pedro Tellechea, has called a press conference this Tuesday to say that the oil industry is prepared for any circumstance, given the limitations that the reimposition of sanctions will imply.
Tellechea said that the measures taken by the United States will also have consequences in the North American country, since he assured that its crude oil inventories are low.
The oil industry has tried to recover production that reached its minimum due to years of lack of investment, mismanagement and immense corruption, which has worsened since the application of sanctions.
From producing 3.2 million barrels per day, Venezuela reached close to 400,000 in 2020, the worst year.
This volume has been increasing until it reaches about 800 thousand barrels per day thanks to the flexibility of operations for the joint companies that the State has with Chevron, Eni and Repsol, without substantial impacts on the economic situation of the country in which it has been achieved. control inflation with too high a cost in the contraction of consumption.
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