The Trump administration’s tighter oil sanctions on Venezuela will deprive President Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian government of money it needs to repress its people, the country’s main opposition leader has said.
In an abrupt policy shift, the US this week cancelled a Biden-era licence for Chevron to pump oil from Venezuela and gave the company one month to exit operations that account for about a quarter of the South American country’s crude output. President Donald Trump said Maduro had not met “electoral conditions” or taken back enough “violent criminals” from the US.
Opposition leader María Corina Machado told the FT by video call from a hiding place inside Venezuela that the government’s share of Chevron’s oil revenues “didn’t go to hospitals and schools, it was spent on repression”.
“The regime used the money that belonged to the Venezuelan people to fund repression against the Venezuelan people,” she said.
Ecoanalítica, a Caracas-based consultancy, estimates Chevron’s licence yielded up to $4.5bn in revenue for Maduro’s government last year, and that without it Venezuela’s projected growth this year would fall from 3.2 per cent to 2 per cent.
“Where did that money go?” Machado asked. “To the elite repression forces who now have new vehicles, new weapons and new technology.”
Oil revenues had been used to finance luxurious private lives for Maduro’s allies in politics and the military, Machado added. Sanctions levied in January by the US, UK and EU added dozens more officials and family members to the regime members already targeted.
“It’s obscene to see the ostentatious lives of those linked to the regime, and I want to see information that the justice departments in the US, Europe and the UK have on them made public,” Machado said. “The world needs to know where that money went.”
The oil revenue loss could also impact foreign exchange flows, hit the embattled bolivar currency and stoke inflation, said Asdrúbal Oliveros, a co-director of Ecoanalítica. Inflation last year ran at 48 per cent, its lowest level in 12 years and down from 148 per cent in 2023, Maduro said in January.
The Biden administration granted Chevron a licence to operate in Venezuela in November 2022, seeking to lure Maduro into permitting a free election. But the government cracked down on the opposition before last July’s presidential election, banning Machado from running and then claiming victory on results that independent observers said were rigged.
The opposition collected tally sheets from more than 80 per cent of polling stations showing its candidate Edmundo González beat Maduro by a margin of more than two to one. González was forced to flee to Spain and Machado went into hiding.
The government is targeting opposition politicians more aggressively than ever, she said, with even her elderly mother being harassed by security forces.
Chevron has operated in Venezuela for much of the last century and lobbied to keep the licence, which it used to steadily increase output to around 200,000 barrels of crude per day. It argued that withdrawing from Venezuela would mean more influence for China and Russia.
Maduro initially made overtures to the Trump administration, welcoming his envoy Richard Grenell to Caracas in January, releasing US hostages and promising to take back Venezuelan deportees.
But secretary of state Marco Rubio and Latin America special envoy Mauricio Claver-Carone, both Venezuela hawks, have pushed a tough line. Rubio described Maduro last month as “a horrible dictator who is instilling all kinds of instability”.
Venezuelan vice-president Delcy Rodriguez said the cancellation was “damaging and inexplicable”. “They are inflicting harm on the United States, its population and its companies,” she said.
During Trump’s first term, the US levelled “maximum pressure” sanctions on Venezuela while recognising opposition figure Juan Guaidó as the country’s legitimate president. That effort failed; Guaidó now lives in Florida.
Some analysts question whether the oil licence cancellation represents a permanent policy shift or simply a negotiating tactic to wring concessions from Maduro — and please Florida lawmakers with Venezuelan constituents.
“I think Trump is trying to balance two competing policy objectives, which both make sense,” said Chris Sabatini, Latin America fellow at Chatham House. “A willingness to get tough on the Maduro government and snap back sanctions on the one hand, and on the other, a negotiation strategy.
“However, the strategy is prisoner to the capriciousness of the man in the White House.”
Machado argued the cancellation was a “dramatic change” that showed Maduro could not establish a good relationship with Trump. “There is a firm, settled position from the US government of making Maduro responsible for his crimes,” she said.
“The new Trump administration now poses a much greater threat to the regime.”
Source link
