Latin America observes that Venezuela has been ＂favorable＂ recently, and US sanctions against Venezuela are futile.

　　Recently, Venezuela has welcomed a number of "benefits", the economic sanctions imposed by the United States on Venezuela have been loosened, the so-called "interim government" supported by the United States in an attempt to replace the current government has been dissolved, and European countries represented by Spain and France are easing their relations with Venezuela. In particular, Latin American countries, such as Colombia and Brazil, have resumed diplomatic relations with Venezuela. These Latin American countries advocate multilateral mechanisms to solve problems and oppose unilateral sanctions and crowding out Venezuela.

　　Local analysts pointed out that there are indications that since 2018, the United States has tried to use unilateral sanctions to force the Venezuelan government to yield and pressure European and Latin American countries to isolate Venezuela, which cannot succeed.

　　American companies resume importing Venezuelan oil.

　　Since 2018, the United States has imposed "extreme pressure" on the Venezuelan government for many years, with the aim of supporting the so-called "interim government" led by Venezuelan opposition leader Guaido. Since the outbreak of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine on February 24 last year, Europe and the United States have imposed sanctions on Russian crude oil exports, resulting in tight international crude oil supply and rising prices for a long time, which has also brought obvious negative effects to domestic oil prices in the United States. In order to stabilize domestic oil prices, the United States began to take the initiative to contact Venezuela, a major oil producer, to seek the possibility of importing oil from Venezuela.

　　On November 26, 2022, the US Treasury Department announced that in the next six months, Chevron will be allowed to resume its oil exploration business in Venezuela and allow it to import oil from Venezuela. As a result, two oil tankers sent by Chevron arrived at Lake Maracaibo, the main oil and gas producing area of Venezuela, on December 29th last year and January 3rd this year respectively. In addition to bringing naphtha used to dilute heavy crude oil to the joint venture between Chevron and Venezuela’s national oil company, it is estimated that 500,000 barrels of crude oil will be transported to Chevron’s refinery in the Gulf of Mexico. This will be the first batch of crude oil shipped from Venezuela to the United States in four years.

△ Chevron oil tanker sent to Venezuela

　　Francesco Monaldi, director of Latin American energy project of Baker School of Public Policy, Rice University, said that the crude oil production capacity of Chevron’s joint venture in Venezuela was 50,000 barrels per day at the end of November last year, and it is expected to increase to 800,000 to 100,000 barrels per day in the following months. If there is enough investment, the production capacity of Chevron is expected to increase to 200,000 to 220,000 barrels per day in the next two years.

　　Under the "favorable" factors such as Chevron’s resumption of operation in Venezuela, the Venezuelan Petrochemical Chamber of Commerce said that by the end of 2023, Venezuela could increase its crude oil production from the current 700,000 barrels per day to 1 million barrels per day, which would greatly increase the country’s oil export revenue. By the end of 2023, the export income including oil, gold and other minerals is expected to reach about 20 billion US dollars, exceeding the estimated income of 15 billion US dollars in 2022, which will help improve Venezuela’s balance of payments.

　　The process of multi-party game is difficult and tortuous.

　　The recent relaxation of sanctions against Venezuela by the United States is the result of a multi-party game, and its process is difficult and tortuous. Shortly after the outbreak of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the United States completely banned the import of Russian oil, resulting in a gap of 600,000 to 700,000 barrels per day. In order to fill the gap, the US government sent a high-level delegation to Venezuela for talks with the Venezuelan government on March 5 last year. In the negotiations, US officials mentioned that Venezuela should export oil directly to the United States in exchange for relaxing US oil sanctions against Venezuela, while trying to determine whether Maduro’s government is prepared to keep a distance from its ally Russia in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Plasencia, Venezuela’s foreign minister, said shortly afterwards that Venezuela was ready to sell oil to the United States again, but at the same time, it remained "loyal" to Russia, which remained an ally.

　　Since the end of March last year, Biden’s government has released 180 million barrels of reserve crude oil to the domestic market in the United States. The urgency of the United States to resume importing oil from Venezuela to stabilize oil prices has declined in a short period of time, and the negotiations between the United States and Venezuela have come to a standstill.

　　After temporarily shelving the option of Venezuela, the US government once tried to persuade Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other oil-producing countries in the Middle East to increase oil production. Last July, Biden visited Saudi Arabia. At the beginning of October 2022, "OPEC+"countries including Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates decided to reduce crude oil production by 2 million barrels per day from November until the end of 2022. Biden stated in this regard that the decision of "OPEC+"prompted the United States to reconsider the issue of oil import substitutes, but the United States has many options. The US media subsequently reported that Biden’s administration is considering the option of relaxing sanctions against Venezuela, so that American oil companies can restart oil production activities in Venezuela.

△ "OPEC+"countries hold a meeting

　　At the end of November last year, Biden’s government allowed Chevron to resume its oil exploration and export business in Venezuela, and Chevron quickly sent tankers to Venezuela to transport crude oil. According to American media reports, Chevron was able to quickly resume importing crude oil after obtaining the license, thanks to the company’s preparations as early as several months ago.

　　The analysis pointed out that a series of chain reactions triggered by the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in the world forced the United States to consider loosening sanctions against the Committee. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace recently wrote in official website that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has continuously strengthened the right to speak in the negotiations between Maduro’s government and the United States. As the United States demands to cut off Russian oil and gas exports and seek alternatives for Russian oil imports, the United States is giving up its "threatening language" against Venezuela in previous years and releasing more "goodwill" instead. Now Venezuela is becoming a "valuable partner" of the United States.

　　The "interim president" was dismissed because of infighting in the opposition.

　　Just as the United States relaxed its sanctions against Venezuela, both the "interim government" and the "interim president" Guaido supported by the United States had problems: the former was dissolved and the latter was dismissed. In the vote on December 30 last year, the Venezuelan opposition passed the decision to dissolve the so-called "interim government" and dismissed Guaido, the "interim president". Of the four main opposition parties in Venezuela, three supported the above decision.

　　Looking back at history, in May 2018, the current president of Venezuela, Maduro, won re-election in the presidential election, but the United States and some western countries did not recognize the election results and supported Guaido, who was elected as the chairman of Venezuela’s parliament in January 2019, as an "interim president". In fact, Guaido has never actually been in power for a day.

　　After the dissolution of the "interim government", the National Security Council of the United States indicated that the United States would continue to support the "interim government" in whatever form it existed. The State Council spokesman Price said on January 3 that although the "interim government" has been dissolved, the United States still "does not recognize" Maduro’s government and will continue to maintain the existing sanctions.

　　Compared with the tough stance of the United States, Venezuelan President Maduro said on January 1 this year that Venezuela is "fully prepared to take measures to normalize relations with the United States". Maduro criticized the US government’s extreme pressure on Venezuela. He said that the United States has taken measures such as suppressing Venezuela, threatening invasion and imposing extreme sanctions, hoping to force Venezuela to split internally and "arrange a president" for Venezuela from the outside, but these measures have been defeated.

　　However, although the Venezuelan government firmly opposed the "interim government" supported by the United States, it did not close the communication channels with the "interim government", especially on November 26 last year, the Venezuelan government and the opposition made an important breakthrough in negotiations for the first time in many years. The two sides agreed to implement a humanitarian rescue plan worth about $3 billion and continue the dialogue in Mexico. This further strengthened the initiative of the Maduro government.

△ Venezuelan President Maduro

　　Although the United States does not admit its failure in supporting the opposition, many mainstream media have quite consistent judgments on this. The New York Times wrote that Guaido’s dismissal was a major blow to the US government, which has been supporting Guaido since 2019. This clearly shows that the opposition has lost confidence in the goal of "replacing the Maduro government" led by Guaido. German news TV issued a document saying that Guaido’s dismissal means that "the attempt to support an influential opposition to compete with the Maduro government has failed".

　　The Sao Paulo newspaper, which has the largest circulation in Brazil, pointed out that although Biden’s government is unwilling to "recognize" Maduro’s government, it has shown that the US policy toward Venezuela has obvious pragmatism from sending a high-level delegation to visit Venezuela in March last year to allowing Chevron to import Venezuelan crude oil.

　　Some European countries began to ease relations with Venezuela.

　　Over the past few years, many European countries have expressed their support for the "interim government" and adopted measures to sanction the Venezuelan government, while some Latin American countries have also "selected side stations" and collectively put pressure on the Maduro government.

　　Today, these situations are changing.

　　In Europe, European countries have realized the importance of Venezuela since the conflict between Russia and Ukraine led to the energy supply crisis in Europe. French President Macron called for the diversification of European oil imports and the return of Venezuela to the international oil market at the G7 summit last July. Last November, at the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference, Macron met with Maduro, and Macron expressed his willingness to start bilateral cooperation beneficial to the whole region. Recently, the Spanish government appointed a new ambassador to Venezuela to restore diplomatic relations between the two countries at the ambassadorial level in order to coordinate the import of oil from Venezuela by the country’s oil companies.

△ European cruise ships arrived in Venezuela for the first time in 15 years.

　　In fact, European energy companies have started importing Venezuelan crude oil earlier. In the middle of last year, Italy’s Eni Group and Spain’s Lepsol Company imported a total of 3.6 million barrels of crude oil from Venezuela, which was the first time that Europe imported Venezuelan oil in two years. Since then, Venezuela has suspended the export of oil to these two European companies for three months because of dissatisfaction with the settlement method that exporting oil can only be used to pay off debts. Since November, Venezuela has resumed oil sales to these two companies. In that month, 2 million barrels of crude oil were exported to Europe, most of which were received by Lepsol’s Bilbao Refinery. The refinery uses heavy crude oil to produce a large amount of petroleum coke (an important raw material for cement, graphite, steelmaking and other industries), and the petroleum coke production capacity of the refinery can meet the demand of European market by about 5%.

　　Jon Imas, president of Lepsol Company, said that importing Venezuelan oil is not only beneficial to the company itself, but also beneficial to Europe as a whole. In the case that Europe is short of Russian oil due to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Venezuela provides another option to supply Europe.

　　Just as some European countries eased relations with Venezuela and increased imports of Venezuelan oil. On January 3, a cruise ship from Europe docked in Venezuela, and nearly 500 passengers from France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and Italy visited Venezuela for the first time in 15 years.

　　Latin American countries move closer to Venezuela

　　At the level of Latin American countries, cracks have appeared within the Lima Group. The Lima Group was founded in Lima, Peru in 2017 by 12 Latin American countries including Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Mexico, with the aim of trying to solve the Venezuelan crisis by peaceful means. At the beginning of the establishment of Lima Group, many member countries boycotted the current Venezuelan government and supported the United States’ practice of excluding Venezuela from attending the Summit of the Americas.

△ Colombian President petro and Venezuelan President Maduro met for the first time in three years

　　Now, the situation has changed. Peru recognized the Maduro government in 2021, while Argentina and Mexico announced their withdrawal from the Lima Group in 2021. On the other hand, after the new President petro took office, Colombian neighbors quickly resumed diplomatic relations with Venezuela at the ambassadorial level, lifted the border blockade, and achieved the first meeting between the two presidents in three years. In Brazil, the largest country in Latin America, Lula officially became president on January 1, which not only ordered the lifting of the ban on the entry of President Maduro into Brazil, but also restored diplomatic relations at the ambassadorial level between the two countries. (General Station reporter Lei Xiangping)