With the Trump administration now having passed noisily into history, US oil companies appear to be wasting no time in seeking to persuade the administration of the country’s new President, Joe Biden, to roll back the crippling sanctions which have placed harsh restrictions on Venezuela’s oil exports and damaged the sector as a whole to a point where repair could take a time span that is difficult to determine.
Last week the Bloomberg news service reported that the US companies Chevron Corp and Reliance Industries Ltd, have already begun to beat a path to the US State Department in an effort to secure the pushing back of at least some of the restrictions imposed by the previous administration on Venezuela’s oil industry.
So swift has been the move by the US oil companies to resume a semblance of normalcy in their relations with Venezuela’s oil sector that according to the Bloomberg report, representatives of the two companies were penciled in to meet with State Department officials as early as last week for discussions which the two companies hope will at least reinstate transactions known as oil swaps that would allow companies to receive Venezuelan crude in exchange for supplying the country with diesel.
