Seized of its own strategic interests rather than any new-found change of heart towards the Maduro administration in Caracas, the Trump administration has moved the goalposts once again in the matter of the presence of US oil companies in Venezuela. Having long targeted Venezuela for harsh economic sanctions in its relentless bid to pressure Maduro into stepping down, Washington now appears, increasingly, to be hedging its bets when it comes the country’s strategically important oil industry. Said to possess the single largest reserves of crude oil anywhere in the world, the viability of Venezuela’s oil & gas sector depends heavily on investments in the technological growth of the industry that come in the main from US powerhouses in petro-technology.
