Photo: JORGE ARREAZA/TWITTER / Courtesy
A former executive of Citgo, the US subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, and a Cuban-American tourist , convicted of corruption and terrorism respectively, were released in Venezuela this Tuesday.
The release of Gustavo Cárdenas was confirmed by the news agency AFP citing his lawyer. The man is part of the “Citgo 6”, a group of six US citizens detained in Venezuela since 2017.
The second released, Jorge Alberto Fernández, had been arrested in 2021 when he entered as a tourist to the South American country with a drone.
The news comes a few days after a high-level United States delegation met with President Nicolás Maduro for the first time
in Caracas since both countries broke relations in 2019.
According to the White House, In the meeting, “energy issues” were discussed in the context of the invasion of Ukraine. For his part, Maduro described the meeting as “respectful, cordial and very diplomatic ”.
The news of the meeting caused surprise and discomfort among the Venezuelan opposition, despite the fact that the US emissaries also met with Juan Guaidó, whom the United States recognizes as the legitimate president of Venezuela
Venezuela’s treatment of detained Citgo executives has varied as the Relations between the US and Venezuela have heated and cooled. Sometimes the detainees were in prison, other times under house arrest.
In 2019 were held in a single cell in the underground prison of the Venezuelan secret police, where The United Nations has documented irregularities and abuses against human rights in the case of at least one of them.
But in May 2021 were released from prison and sent to serve arrest home, a decision that the Biden government welcomed.
Alternatives to Russian oil
According to experts consulted by The New York Times, which leaked information about the meeting and its particular context last weekend, Washington is looking for alternatives to Russian oil.
This Tuesday, US President Joe Biden announced the total ban on immediate removal of oil, natural gas and coal imports from Russia as a sanction for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Since April 2019, USA does not allows Venezuela to trade its crude in the US market, a trade that represented the 96% of income to the South American country.
But when sanctions against oil and gas exports began to be applied of Russia, several influential figures affiliated with the two main US political parties pointed to Venezuela as a potential substitute to fill the shortage generated by the sanctions.
Venezuela produces some 549, barrels of oil per day, just a fraction of the 3 million it produced per day for years.
80,03 more barrels
This Tuesday the head of the Venezuelan Oil Chamber, Reinaldo Quintero, told the BBC that his country could increase your oil production by 50,000 barrels per day to help replace Russian oil.
Quintero assured that the South American country has the infrastructure to raise its production levels from the current ones 768, daily barrels to 1.2 million.
“That will allow us to satisfy some of the needs the North American market”, he said.
Quintero assured that he does not expect the sanctions, imposed by former President Donald Trump, to be lifted, but that the Biden administration will likely issue licenses allowing foreign companies to operate in Venezuela, thus exempting them from sanctions.
This, he said, would also allow much-needed foreign investment in Venezuela’s cash-starved oil industry and ease the shortage of skilled workers.
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