Look at oil reserves: US tries rapprochement with Venezuela

View of oil reserves
US seeks rapprochement with Venezuela

Relations between the US and Venezuela are not the best. But the Ukraine war and the tense oil market could now cause Washington to rethink. The first high-level contacts have already been made.

The US and Venezuela have discussed energy issues against the backdrop of Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. Jen Psaki, spokeswoman for US President Joe Biden, said high-ranking representatives of the US government had traveled to the South American crisis country. There was initially no information on the outcome of the talks in the capital Caracas.

In the USA there are efforts to ban the import of Russian oil and gas because of the attack on Ukraine. An alternative would be Venezuela, which is also rich in raw materials. However, the United States has also imposed sanctions on the South American country and has accused the authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro of drug trafficking and money laundering. In addition, the US government put a kind of bounty on Maduro in 2020.

The “New York Times” had previously reported that because of the Russian invasion of the former Soviet republic, the US government is increasingly turning its attention to Moscow’s allies in Latin America. Washington is striving for further international isolation of Moscow, it said, citing informed circles. In February, the United States signaled its willingness to review its sanctions policy on Caracas if talks between the Maduro government and the opposition, which began in August, progress.

According to the newspaper report, representatives of the US State Department and the White House had traveled to Caracas. Among other things, Washington is apparently interested in getting some of its oil imports from Russia from Venezuela in the future.

Venezuela is the country with the largest oil reserves in the world. Along with Cuba and Nicaragua, it is one of Russia’s closest allies in Latin America. After the Russian attack on Ukraine, Venezuela backed the Kremlin.

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