US President Donald Trump's administration on Thursday eased some sanctions on Venezuela's oil industry, Reuters reported.
The Trump administration wants to expand oil production in Venezuela after US special forces ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in early January.
The US Treasury Department has issued a general license authorizing transactions involving the Venezuelan government and state oil company PDVSA. This applies, among other things, to the extraction, export, purchase, sale, refining and transportation of oil originating in Venezuela.
The decision to issue a general license marks a shift from a previous plan to grant individual exemptions from the sanctions to companies wishing to do business in the country.
In recent weeks, oil producers Chevron, Repsol and ENI have applied for licenses to expand oil production or exports from Venezuela.
Venezuela opens up to private investors
On Thursday, Venezuela's parliament also passed a bill that opens up the country's oil industry to private investors, writes the AFP news agency. This means that decades of tight state control over foreign investment in the oil sector are being rolled back in Venezuela. Venezuela's interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez, calls it historic.
The new law states that private companies based in Venezuela will be able to extract oil without having to cooperate with the state-owned energy company PDVSA.
After the US captured Maduro and brought him to the United States, US officials have said that the US will ease sanctions imposed on Venezuela's oil sector.
Delcy Rodríguez is under pressure from the US president to give American oil giants access to Venezuela's valuable subsoil. Trump has supported Rodríguez, even though she was Maduro's vice president, on the condition that she follows the US president's agenda.
Venezuela's oil reserves are the world's largest, and the country holds about a fifth of the world's total reserves. However, the country extracts only barely one percent of the oil extracted globally. Trump has made no secret of his desire to have full access to Venezuela's crude oil.
/ritzau/
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