Trump administration gives Chevron just one month to end oil operations in Venezuela
The Trump administration formally revoked on Tuesday the license that allows oil giant Chevron Corp. to sell Venezuelan oil in the United States, giving the U.S. company only 30 days to wind down its operations in the South American country.
The decision, which was announced last week by President Donald Trump, is likely to have a significant impact on the finances of the Nicolás Maduro regime, since Chevron produces about a quarter of the country’s total output.
In an announcement issued by the Treasury Department, the U.S. government said Chevron has until April 3 to end its operations in the South American country, instead of the five months granted by the Chevron license that was automatically renewed on Feb. 1.
Chevron’s production in Venezuela averages about 220,000 barrels per day, amounting to about 24% of the country’s current output of 900,000 barrels per day.
Experts said that the 30-day wind-down period gives Chevron little time to do anything else than to hand the operations they are running to state-run Petróleos de Venezuela, PDVSA, its partner in the joint ventures they are operating in the South American country.
“This will be rushed,” former PDVSA director of planning, Juan Fernández, said of the transfer of control of the Chevron operations. “Under normal conditions, this is done over a much longer period of time.”
PDVSA has always been the largest shareholder in these ventures, but the regime had handed the operational control to Chevron, knowing the U.S. company would run the projects more efficiently.
Also at stake could be the operations of other international companies that alongside Chevron have U.S licenses and have been selling oil out of Venezuela. These include Spain’s Repsol, Italy’s Eni, France’s Maurel & Prom and India’s Reliance Industries, which together are responsible for another 230,000 barrels per day of the country’s total output.
While the measure announced Tuesday did not affect them directly, a statement previously made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that they are also in Washington’s cross-hairs.
“Today, pursuant to @POTUS directive, I am providing foreign policy guidance to terminate all Biden-era oil and gas licenses that have shamefully bankrolled the illegitimate Maduro regime,” Rubio wrote last Wednesday on his X account, indicating that Chevron’s was not the only license to be revoked.
Chevron and the other companies have played a key role in Venezuela’s efforts to boost its oil production, which had fallen to levels nearing 400,000 barrels per day in 2020, from the 3.2 million barrels per day it managed to produce before late president Hugo Chávez launched his socialist revolution 25 years ago.
The contribution to Maduro’s government coming from all foreign oil companies amounts to about $700 million to $800 million per month, said Antonio De La Cruz, director of the Washington based think tank Inter American Trends. “That money is used to finance the corruption that keeps the military happy,” he added. “It is also needed to finance the repression that keeps the population under control, but most valuable of all for Maduro, it is clean money that can be used to launder part of the money coming in from illicit sources.”
When first announcing his decision to revoke the oil licenses, President Trump said he was doing it in part because Maduro had failed to take back Venezuelan deportees from the U.S. with the speed he had agreed in a meeting with his envoy, Ambassador Richard Grenell.
“The regime has not been transporting the violent criminals that they sent into our Country (the Good Ole’ U.S.A.) back to Venezuela at the rapid pace that they had agreed to. I am therefore ordering that the ineffective and unmet Biden ‘Concession Agreement’ be terminated as of the March 1st option to renew,” Trump said on his Truth Social account.
The steps taken so far mark the reversal of a policy that sought to force Maduro into taking back hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans currently living in the United States in exchange for allowing his regime to revive its ailing oil industry.
That policy was avidly promoted by a number of American oil businessmen who have dealings in Venezuela, led by Harry Sargeant III, a Florida tycoon with close ties to the Republican Party.
According to a Miami Herald investigation, it was Sargeant who, behind the scenes, helped set up the a meeting between Maduro and Grenell on Jan. 31. That meeting laid the groundwork for a deal to allow the Caracas regime to boost its oil sales to the United States in exchange for accepting hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan deportees.
This story was originally published March 4, 2025 at 11:39 AM.
