A sculpture of a hand holding an oil well stands outside the headquarters of PetrĂłleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) in Caracas, Venezuela, Tuesday, March 21, 2023. Photo: Ariana Cubillos/AP.
After more than six years of a deliberate energy blockade, the US empire has formally lifted the ban on selling diluents for heavy crude oil to Venezuela. The authorization was issued by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) through General License No. 47, permitting transactions with the Venezuelan state and the publicly-owned company PetrĂłleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA).
The decision made this Wednesday, February 4, represents a partial ease of one of the most aggressive sanctions imposed since 2019, explicitly designed to strangle the country’s main source of income. The ban on access to US diluents—essential technical inputs for processing the extra-heavy crude from the Orinoco Oil Belt—was a determining factor in the historic drop in Venezuelan production, which fell from more than 3 million barrels per day (bpd) to lows below 500,000, amid an unprecedented US financial, commercial, and logistical blockade.
🇻🇪🇺🇸 El Departamento de Tesoro de #EEUU autorizĂł el martes la venta de diluyentes estadounidenses a #Venezuela, un insumo esencial para que el paĂs pueda procesar y exportar su crudo pesado.
Según la Licencia General N° 47 de la OFAC, esta medida permite transacciones con el… pic.twitter.com/4nLBo2lFHP
— Manuel Araujo (@araujomanuel10) February 4, 2026
Diluents, such as condensate and certain specialized naphthas, are not a technical luxury but a basic material condition for the exploitation of Venezuelan oil. Their absence forced PDVSA to resort to improvised, costly, and less efficient blends, reducing export capacity, deteriorating crude quality, and increasing costs throughout the entire production chain. The blockade was neither symbolic nor rhetorical: it was mechanical, calculated, and devastating, as reported by experts.
With this new license, Washington officially authorizes the export, sale, transport, and delivery of diluents of US origin, as well as associated financial and logistical services. However, the authorization is surrounded by a web of legal and political control. As a result, analysts confirmed that it is not a gesture of goodwill, but a tactical adjustment conditioned by US colonial strategic interests. The contracts are subject to US courts, alternative payment mechanisms are excluded, and a system of periodic supervision is maintained over each operation, reaffirming the logic of imperialist guardianship and permanent pressure on the Venezuelan economy.
Stable access to diluents could allow an immediate increase in Venezuelan oil production of between 20% and 30%, provided that the supply is not interrupted. Although General License No. 47 is not lifting of the US illegal sanctions, analysts claim, it does constitute an implicit admission of the failure of the “maximum pressure” policy, which has been applied for years with the stated objective of causing the economic and political collapse of Venezuela.
This shift also occurs in an international context marked by volatile energy prices, the reshaping of the global geopolitical map, and the growing loss of the control of the US entity over strategic hydrocarbon flows.
(Telesur)
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/AU
