CARA­CAS, Venezuela (AP) — A per­mit is­sued by the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment al­low­ing en­er­gy gi­ant Chevron Corp. to pump and ex­port Venezue­lan oil will be ter­mi­nat­ed this week, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump an­nounced Wednes­day, end­ing what be­came a fi­nan­cial life­line for the South Amer­i­can coun­try.

Trump’s an­nounce­ment in his Truth So­cial net­work ac­cused the gov­ern­ment of Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro of not meet­ing de­mo­c­ra­t­ic con­di­tions for last year’s Ju­ly pres­i­den­tial elec­tion as well as of not mov­ing fast enough to trans­port back to Venezuela im­mi­grants set for de­por­ta­tion.

“We are here­by re­vers­ing the con­ces­sions that Crooked Joe Biden gave to Nicolás Maduro, of Venezuela, on the oil trans­ac­tion agree­ment,” Trump wrote.

Trump’s post did not specif­i­cal­ly men­tion Cal­i­for­nia-based Chevron nor the per­mit, for­mal­ly known as a gen­er­al li­cense, that ex­empts the com­pa­ny from eco­nom­ic sanc­tions and al­lows it to ex­port and sale Venezue­lan oil in the US. But it is the on­ly Venezuela-re­lat­ed li­cence whose is­suance and re­new­al in­for­ma­tion match the dates Trump did men­tion in his so­cial me­dia post.

The ad­min­is­tra­tion of Pres­i­dent Joe Biden au­tho­rised the li­cence in 2022 af­ter Maduro agreed to work with Venezuela’s po­lit­i­cal op­po­si­tion to­ward a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tion. But the elec­tion, which took place in Ju­ly 2024, was nei­ther fair nor free, and Maduro was sworn in last month for a third six-year term de­spite cred­i­ble ev­i­dence that his op­po­nent got more votes.

Biden’s gov­ern­ment for months then re­sist­ed calls from Venezuela’s op­po­si­tion and oth­ers to re­scind the li­cence, whose goal the US ini­tial­ly said was “to sup­port the restora­tion of democ­ra­cy.” The op­po­si­tion has es­ti­mat­ed that Maduro’s gov­ern­ment has re­ceived about $4 bil­lion through the per­mit, which was set to be re­newed Sat­ur­day.

Over time, the li­cense has be­come re­spon­si­ble for rough­ly a quar­ter of Venezuela’s oil pro­duc­tion.

“We are aware of to­day’s an­nounce­ment and are con­sid­er­ing its im­pli­ca­tions,” Chevron spokesman Bill Turenne said in a state­ment. “Chevron con­ducts its busi­ness in Venezuela in com­pli­ance with all laws and reg­u­la­tions, in­clud­ing the sanc­tions frame­work pro­vid­ed by US gov­ern­ment.”

Venezuela sits atop the world’s largest proven oil re­serves and once used them to pow­er Latin Amer­i­ca’s strongest econ­o­my. But cor­rup­tion, mis­man­age­ment and even­tu­al U.S. eco­nom­ic sanc­tions saw pro­duc­tion de­cline steadi­ly.

More than 7.7 mil­lion Venezue­lans have left their home­land since 2013, when the oil-de­pen­dent econ­o­my came un­done and Maduro be­came pres­i­dent. Most set­tled in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, but af­ter the pan­dem­ic, they in­creas­ing­ly set their sights on the US. (AP)

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