Venezuela

Venezuela received two active OFAC general license actions between 27 March and 8 April 2026, during the same 22-day window in which the Office of Foreign Assets Control issued exactly zero Iran-related actions. On 27 March OFAC issued new and amended Venezuela-related general licenses authorising specific oil transactions, and on 8 April it amended Russia-related licenses in parallel. Iran received nothing. That parallel is the story: the Trump administration is actively maintaining the Venezuela sanctions architecture while the Iran file sits dormant through an active war.

Venezuela holds the world's largest proven crude oil reserves, estimated at over 300 billion barrels, concentrated in the Orinoco Belt. Production collapsed from around 3 million barrels a day in the late 1990s to under 800,000 barrels a day by the mid-2020s, under a mix of US sanctions, investment flight, and state-company decay at PDVSA. The country has been under a layered US sanctions regime since 2019, with General Licenses (notably GL 41 and its successors) carving out specific exemptions for Chevron and a handful of other operators under conditions that vary with each renewal.

For the Iran war coverage, Venezuela matters less as a subject than as a control case. The same OFAC desks that update Venezuela general licenses every few weeks have issued no Iran-related action since General License U on 20 March. Venezuela's continued sanctions maintenance is the proof that the Iran silence is deliberate, not administrative neglect.