Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro assured US investors that he was a safe bet as he visited a plant operated by major US oil company Chevron in the weeks leading up to the now heavily disputed July 2024 election. It was part of a charm offensive that had been ongoing for months as the autocrat sought to revamp his image and assure foreign oil executives that his country was open for business despite an over decade-long economic and humanitarian crisis.
More than half a year later, Venezuelan oil exports have grown significantly. In January, there was a 15% increase, driven mainly by larger shipments from Chevron through its joint ventures with national company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA).
Chevron restarted operations in Venezuela in 2022 when former US President Joe Biden’s administration granted it special licences to do so. The licences have come under scrutiny over the past few months, with critics saying they feed into Maduro’s coffers and with new US President Donald Trump having seemingly overhauled the US approach to the thousand-piece geopolitical puzzle that Venezuela presents.
Trump recently announced he would be terminating the oil licenses to export Venezuelan oil to the US. Although he did not mention Chevron by name, he alluded to the Biden administration’s actions in 2022. This gives Chevron a six-month period to exit Venezuela, leaving room for negotiations and raising the question of whether it is a real threat or a negotiation tactic.
The willingness of the new administration to engage with Maduro is a sharp reversal from Trump’s first term. In 2016, he applied a policy of “maximum pressure” through harsh sanctions and was central in the Venezuelan opposition’s ploy to topple the government with leader Juan Guaido. When that attempt failed, Maduro’s government grew more repressive, and a quarter of the population fled as the country sank deeper into a socioeconomic crisis.
By 2020, Venezuela had more refugees and forced migrants than any other country apart from Syria. Approximately 600,000 of those migrants live in the US under a special legal status that allows them to work and live legally. However, one of the central tenets of the Trump administration’s agenda is limiting migration, and as part of that effort it recently moved to end the protection of this legal status for more than 300,000 Venezuelans, soon making them subject to deportation.
Venezuela wants to keep the oil licenses and the US needs them to accept deportation flights. There has been a lobbying campaign from the oil industry for the governments to make an “oil for migrants” deal. But, Trump’s recent announcement to revoke the licenses puts the viability of this deal into question. Whether he is bluffing, or will actually remove the licenses, is yet to be seen. However, the circumstances that have led up to this moment have been years in the making.
Trump’s victory in 2016 happened at an extremely contentious time in Venezuelan history. Hugo Chavez, the former president who started the process of democratic backsliding in Venezuela, had died three years earlier. While Maduro had been Chavez’s hand-picked successor, he lacked his mentor’s charisma, and years of corruption and volatile oil prices were catching up with the country’s economy.
“The most delicate moment in Venezuelan history was in 2016 when Chevron had no capacity to do anything in Venezuela,” explains Carlos Lizarralde, author of Venezuela’s Collapse: The Long Story of How Things Fell Apart, to Investment Monitor.
“There is a humanitarian crisis, there are more murders than anywhere in the world, there is chaos, and inflation is 1,000,000,000%. Maduro is barely hanging on to power. In that context, Trump imposes sanctions that eliminate all US oil production in the country.”
In 2017, mass protests broke out after multiple opposition leaders were jailed and negotiations broke down with the government. Hundreds of people were detained and there were more than 91 confirmed deaths.
Maduro reacted by loosening currency controls, which increased dollarisation in the economy – with currency (bolivars) having been rendered worthless by hyperinflation – increased mining in the Orinoco Mining Arc and strengthened ties with Russia and China. While the situation only barely improved for most people in the country, who still lived in poverty, Maduro was able to relatively stabilise the economy and offer light relief.
A few years later, in 2022, although Maduro was still at the helm, the global landscape had changed. There was a new US President, and war broke out in Europe for the first time in decades when Russia invaded Ukraine. This led to a global energy crunch and higher oil prices. Only a month after the invasion began, US officials from the Biden administration started talks with Maduro’s government and granted a licence to Chevron so it could resume operations in Venezuela. At the time, the US Government denied that the licenses were granted to help relieve mounting inflation and said they were part of “targeted sanctions relief” for “concrete steps that alleviate the suffering of the Venezuelan people and support the restoration of democracy”.
From 2022 to 2023, there was a 7% increase in oil production in Venezuela from 744,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 800bpd. However, this coincided with a major corruption scandal that saw the president of national oil company PDVSA ousted.
“So, Chevron’s increased presence may have helped production, but it coincided with a major corruption scandal that undermined progress,” Michael McCarthy, president of Caracas Wire, a consultancy providing analysis on Venezuela’s crisis, told Investment Monitor.
The presence of the US company in Venezuela has made a major difference to its GDP. According to Caracas Wire projections, if the licences stay in place through 2026, the country’s GDP growth could stay around 3–4%, but if they are cancelled in 2025, Venezuela “might go down to a scenario of 1% growth or even zero”, McCarthy explained. If the licences are revoked in mid-2025, “we think [Venezuela] would sink into a recession pretty quickly”.
It is worth noting that multiple other international companies have received special licences to operate in Venezuela, such as Spanish energy company Repsol, Italian companies Eni and Morello, and others. However, Chevron has become the main player in this saga because it is the most active in the country. “No one can make the difference that Chevron can on its own,” McCarthy notes. In January 2025, Bloomberg revealed Chevron had filed tax returns worth around $300m (19.33bn bolivars) with the Venezuela Government in 2024. Any payment to the Venezuelan Government is forbidden in the sanctions waiver granted to Chevron.
A few weeks after the US election, the WSJ revealed there had been an ongoing lobbying campaign from oil investors, who were pushing Trump to reverse his maximum pressure policy on Venezuela and allow the oil licences to continue renewing. The Venezuelan Government also welcomed many US investors in 2024. Some of those businessmen told the WSJ Maduro hoped that, through providing a regional oil supply and accepting deportation flights of illegal migrants (which had previously been suspended), they could better negotiate with the Trump administration.
At the same time as US businessmen were being charmed by Maduro in luxurious restaurants, the country’s opposition parties were broaching a historic election taking place in July 2024. After years of repression, failed attempts (Guaido’s stunt saw his popularity crash with many Venezuelans) and internal fractures, the Venezuelan opposition unified around Maria Corina Machado, a long-standing political figure who, unlike many of her peers, had managed to resist exile or detainment.
During her year-long campaign, Machado was banned from taking flights, blocked from major transport routes and animal blood was thrown at her car. Lizarralde highlights that Machado’s courting of religion (she was often seen wearing upwards of ten rosaries) allowed her to surpass socioeconomic and ethnic divisions that have often separated the political opposition from most of the country.
Soon after the opposition elected Machado as their candidate for the presidential election, she was banned from running for public office. Her team eventually tapped Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, a soft-spoken retired diplomat, as her stand-in. While the opposition had disputed election results before, they hoped that if they achieved an electoral win of a wide enough margin, it would be too difficult for Maduro to brush away.
Indeed, the country’s election watchdog (which is closely allied with the government) declared Maduro as victor with 51% of the vote, and the opposition quickly disputed these claims. They had gathered tally sheets produced by electronic voting machines around the country as evidence. These sheets said Gonzalez had received ,ore than 6.2 million votes and Maduro more than 2.7 million. They were later published online and verified by international election observers. The Carter Center, which was invited to observe the elections by Maduro’s government, also verified their legitimacy.
A strong wave of repression that followed saw thousands of protesters jailed (including minors), poll workers targeted and a climate of fear that had not been felt before. Gonzalez left the country, while Machado went into hiding.
Since then, Gonzalez has maintained a steady international campaign to garner diplomatic support, while Machado has tried to continue conveying her message mainly through social media. He has been recognised as the rightful winner of the elections by the US and most European countries. Even some of Maduro’s traditional allies in the region like Colombia and Brazil broke their diplomatic paradigm and questioned the legitimacy of the election.
It was an ordeal that the country’s diaspora of seven million people watched closely from all over the world – particularly in the US, where approximately 770,000 Venezuelans live.
In late January, the Washington Post published an interview with Gonzalez in which he urged Trump against making a deportation deal with Maduro. By then, the Venezuelan Government’s position of being willing to trade deportation flights for the preservation of oil licences was known, and Gonzalez was trying to remind the US one more time that doing so would give legitimacy to an authoritarian government.
However, at the same time as this warning was going out, US Special Envoy Richard Grenell already had wheels on the ground in Venezuela (31 January). He met with Maduro in Venezuela’s presidential palace, which released a photo, much to the dismay of many Venezuelans, who hoped Trump would return to a “maximum pressure” approach.
Nicolas Maduro’s meeting with US Special Envoy Richard Grenell in the presidential palace was broadcasted on national Venezuelan television. Credit: VTV.
Grenell returned to the US with six Americans who had been detained in Venezuela, which Trump celebrated on Truth Social, writing: “And very important to note, that Venezuela has agreed to receive, back into their Country, all Venezuela illegal aliens who were encamped in the US, including gang members of Tren de Aragua. Venezuela has further agreed to supply the transportation back.”
Over the ten years of Trump’s political life, and despite many U-turns (consider TikTok, abortion, Elon Musk), there is one issue on which he has always been consistent: immigration. When he first appeared, Mexicans were often the targets of his political slingshots. Over the years, however, as the migratory body of the US has changed, Trump has changed his aim accordingly. The Migration Policy Institute calculates that Venezuelans have been one of the fastest-growing immigrant groups in the US since 2010. As of January 2023, approximately 770,000 Venezuelans were living in the country.
It is estimated that approximately 607,000 of those migrants are covered by temporary protected status (TPS). TPS is assigned to migrants from certain countries that the US deems unsafe for them to return to. It allows migrants to work and live legally in the US. The programme must be renewed every six to 18 months, leading to criticisms that at one point renewal becomes automatic.
A few high-profile cases have given Venezuelan migrants a degree of protagonism in US politics they haven’t had before. In February of 2024, nursing student Laken Riley was killed in Georgia by Venezuelan immigrant Jose Antonio Ibarra. The tragedy became a central talking point for Republicans, who highlighted it as a clear-cut case study of how the dangers of immigration were affecting ‘real’ Americans. (A migration bill called the Laken Riley Act was passed weeks into Trump’s second term.) As Trump’s campaign gained momentum, a Venezuelan prison gang called Tren de Aragua became a recurrent character during his speeches.
In early February, two days after Grenell’s visit to Venezuela and the picture of him shaking hands with Maduro was released, US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declined to renew TPS for Venezuelans, leaving almost 350,000 migrants vulnerable to deportation, starting in April. For the rest of Venezuelan TPS holders, their protections are likely to expire in September.
“There is not a significant precedent of a revocation [of legal status] of that magnitude, but the US has terminated TPS designations for other nationalities,” explains Ariel Ruiz Soto, senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, to Investment Monitor. “There are many smaller nationalities that have maybe several thousand people protected under TPS.”
The revocation of TPS also “comes at an intersection of increasing enforcement in the US that makes it much more probable that the migrants who would be without status would actually become subject to deportation,” adds Ruiz. Despite Trump’s clear position towards migrants, many Venezuelans have been long-term supporters of him (often colloquially referred to as “MAGAzuelans”), making the move feel like a betrayal in Latino hotspots like Florida.
The TPS revocation, however, is just one part of Trump’s wider immigration agenda. The president has repeatedly said he will deport every illegal migrant in the US, a figure estimated at 13 million people. Ruiz notes that there are major challenges to reaching such a figure, like institutional capacity to fly people to other countries, limited agents in the workforce, detention capacity and the ability to share resources between migration agencies. On any given day, there are only “47,000 beds […] to be able to detain migrants in the country”, he says.
The US requires countries of origin to accept returning migrant flights to complete deportations. Maduro had stopped receiving flights in 2023 after a dispute with the Biden administration. Ruiz says that although flights can only carry a few hundred people at a time, they are an important political and deterrence tool for the US government.
He emphasises that, while we have not seen massive deportations, “the Trump administration has laid the groundwork to do so” through actions such as expanding the government’s capacity to hold migrants and through proclaiming that there is an invasion “so that even the small groups that could receive asylum at the border under President Biden now are not eligible to do so”.
A little over a week after the meeting between Grenell and Venezuelan leaders, Maduro sent two planes to the US that returned with 190 Venezuelan deportees. The White House posted a picture, saying the operation was overseen by Grenell.
Trump announced yesterday that he’d be revoking the oil license granted by Biden in 2022. He cited the Venezuelan elections in July and a failure to deport “the violent criminals they sent into our country […] back to Venezuela at the rapid pace that they agreed to” as the reasons for the decision. The President said the license will be cancelled as of March 1st.
Francisco Rodriguez, professor of public and international affairs at University of Denver and author of The Collapse of Venezuela, explained on X that the license is structured so that it is valid for six months after its last renewal, meaning that if it is not revoked before March 1st, it will be valid until August 1st.
He also noted that on the website of the Office of Foreign Assets (OFAC), the licenses haven’t been removed. With past decisions, OFAC has published the changes before or on the same day as an official announcement.
“The decision comes about amid negotiations with Congress about the reconciliation project, which is key for Trump to approve his budget and avoid a government shutdown, or worse, a crisis with the debt ceiling. Legislators from Florida opposed to the licenses demand the cancellation of License 41 as a condition to approve the project, giving Trump an incentive to strong hand Maduro, at least in the short term,” Rodriguez explained.
“The most logical thing is that the US revokes the license discretely March 1 to ensure votes in Congress from Florida legislators. That way, Trump keeps his promises without immediately revoking the license,” he concludes.
This would leave six months to renegotiate with all the parties involved. Given the delays on the 25% import tariffs for Mexico and Canada, it is worth questioning whether Trump is using this as a negotiating tactic rather than having made a final decision.
McCarthy says that Grenell’s trip suggested that, as negotiations with the US continue, Maduro might want assurances that Rubio’s faction within the administration won’t be a problem. “In order for Maduro to sell these agreements to [his] party, [he] needs to be able to tell his people that what Rubio is doing is irrelevant,” he explains.
Lizarralde highlights that Chevron’s exit from Venezuela would likely not be the turning point for a peaceful transition. If Maduro survived the 2016 crisis, then he would be able to weather that storm. He points out that, in Venezuelan history, dictatorships have only ended through the military.
“Military people have to feel like they are talking with one of their own. And that does not happen with the Venezuelan opposition, and it’s something that hasn’t happened in 25 years,” he explains.
Even if the licenses are revoked, the US’s willingness to negotiate with Maduro does help legitimise his government and raises the risk of deportation for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants, many of who have lived in the US legally for years. And while these flights may not be able to send all the Venezuelan migrants who lose their TPS status back to their home country, the changes have instilled fear and upset in the community.
A Venezuelan migrant who received TPS in 2021, soberly told the Washington Post: “We are the new target.”
“Will an ‘oil for migrants’ deal become a reality for Venezuela and the US? ” was originally created and published by Investment Monitor, a GlobalData owned brand.
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