The Trump administration on Tuesday gave Chevron 30 days to stop oil production in Venezuela after Washington accused President Nicolas Maduro of not making progress on electoral reforms and migrant returns.
President Trump reversed a Biden-era license that allowed the oil giant to operate in Venezuela despite US sanctions – a U-turn from January when the White House appeared to be making progress with Maduro.
The Treasury Department gave the US-based oil giant an April 3 deadline to pull up stakes, much quicker than the usual six-month wind-down period.
“Closing down Chevron’s operations in a month is an almost impossible task,” Geoff Ramsey, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, told Bloomberg. “I would bet the administration is leaving space for the license to be renewed in April, if new terms are negotiated.”
In a statement, Chevron said its business in Venezuela complies with all laws and regulations, including the United States’ sanctions imposed during Trump’s first term.
“We are aware of the President’s directive and will abide by any direction given by the US Treasury Department to implement that directive,” a Chevron spokesperson told The Post.
The hard stop to Chevron’s oil production in Venezuela could eventually remove up to 200,000 barrels a day from the global market, according to Bloomberg.
It’s unlikely to have an immediate impact on prices, especially since OPEC decided this week to boost production – planning to increase output by 138,000 barrels per day in April.
But Chevron’s exit could shrink Venezuela’s economy by as much as 7.5% this year, according to the Finance Observatory, an opposition-run research group.
Republican lawmakers have slammed the Biden administration’s waiver, claiming Chevron has become the backbone of the Maduro-controlled country’s economy.
Chevron’s joint ventures with the state-run Petroleos de Venezuela SA accounted for about $4 billion in tax payments since it got the approval in 2022 – or approximately a quarter of the government’s total revenue, according to Ecoanalitica, a Caracas-based consulting firm.
In January, Trump had sent White House special envoy Richard Grenell to meet with Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital.
The US has been seeking to restore fair elections in the country, and push Maduro to take back deportees.
Nearly eight million Venezuelans have left the country during Maduro’s reign, according to The Wall Street Journal. Many more could opt to flee as the Venezuelan economy withers without Chevron, Francisco Rodríguez, a University of Denver professor, told the Journal.
Grenell reportedly clinched a deal for oil licenses to remain in place, at least for the time being, while Maduro agreed to resume accepting deportees, people familiar with the talks told The Wall Street Journal.
Following the trip, the White House brought home six of the at least 13 Americans imprisoned in Venezuela.
Maduro, meanwhile, sent two planes to a Texas military base to pick up deported migrants, and a third jet to retrieve more of his citizens from Honduras.
But the flights of pick up migrants stalled by late February, as Trump made clear his plans to kill the Biden administration’s waivers.
“We are hereby reversing the concessions that Crooked Joe Biden gave to Nicolás Maduro,” the president wrote in a Truth Social post on Feb. 26.
He said the Maduro regime had not met fair electoral conditions, or transported “violent criminals…at the rapid pace that they had agreed to.”
Later that day, Donald Trump Jr. released an interview with Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio doubled down in a post the following day, saying the Biden-era oil licenses would be revoked after they “have shamefully bankrolled the illegitimate Maduro regime.”
This story originally appeared on NYPost
