Letter from Venezuela: A long journey back from the oil wilderness

Lifting sanctions may still be a bridge too far in becoming a sustainable supplier of crude to the US

There is a great irony in the fact that sanctions-blighted Venezuela has some wiggle room in exporting crude to the US given it would be replacing Russian barrels. But the irony may be moot given the difficulty the Latin American country would have in, first, getting sanctions lifted further and, second, ramping up supplies even if restrictions were eased. After the Biden administration looked to bring in new sources of crude imports following the ban on Russian oil, it decided in November 2022 to give Chevron a six-month licence to expand operations and export Venezuelan oil to the US. But strained relations between Caracas and Washington mean there is unlikely to be a flurry of new opportu