US sanctions will sharply limit oil transactions between Venezuela and other countries and are similar to but slightly less extensive than those imposed on Iran last year, experts said on Friday after looking at details posted by the Treasury Department.
Treasury's notice makes more explicit that the sanctions restrict foreign entities from doing business with Venezuela using the US financial system or US brokers after April. With most oil transactions conducted in dollars, that is expected to sharply curtail off Venezuela's efforts to seek buyers around the world.
US officials imposed sanctions on state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA, this week, seeking to cut off President Nicolas Maduro's primary source of foreign revenues. Most of the Western Hemisphere has thrown its support behind opposition leader Juan Guaido after Maduro was re-elected in a contest last year widely seen as fraudulent.
"On one hand, the sanctions aren't as severe as on Iran yet. We don't ban any country that does business with Venezuela from doing business in the US," said Robert McNally, president of Rapidan Energy, a Washington D.C. consultancy. "On the other hand, the goal of regime change is explicit and very clear."
Venezuela sells oil to buyers around the world, including India and Europe, and the country has been seeking buyers elsewhere to replace the roughly 500,000 barrels a day it sells to the United States. Even before Friday's notice, European buyers had pulled back on taking shipments from Venezuela due to concerns about how to make payments. Europe may also join the sanctions, experts have said, further constraining options for transporting the crude.
"If a supplier can do so without using the US financial system, then they are not in breach of anything. But find me any market participant that does not," said an executive at a major trading house. Spokespeople for Vitol and Trafigura, two of the largest merchant traders in commodities, both said Friday they will comply with all applicable sanctions.
Few alternative buyers are available for the heavy Venezuelan crude oil that is currently shipped to the United States, said Ed Morse, global head of commodity research at Citi Group. "It's just not clear that there's 500,000 barrels a day of upgrading capacity around the world that is freed up to do that," Morse said.
The large-scale sanctions froze the assets of PDVSA and also require US firms to pay for oil into accounts controlled by Guaido, the country's opposition party head and self-proclaimed interim president.
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