U.S. tells Venezuela oil sanctions will return in April if it doesn’t agree to free elections

The Biden administration sent a message to the Nicolás Maduro regime Wednesday night with a reminder that Venezuela has until the middle of next month to comply with the free-elections commitments it made last year in Barbados if it does not want to see the reestablishment of oil sanctions.

The statement came in response to the refusal by Venezuela’s National Electoral Council, an entity tightly controlled by the regime, to close the registration for presidential candidates without allowing top opposition contender María Corina Machado or her proxy, university professor Corina Yoris, to run.

“We remain united with the international community in calling upon Maduro to allow Venezuelans to participate in free and fair elections,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement. “As we have made clear, actions that run counter to the spirit and letter of the Barbados Agreement will have consequences.”

The US. government has already indicated several times that it will not renew the special licenses it granted to lift the sanctions imposed on Venezuelan oil once they expire on April 18 if the regime does not begin to comply with the obligations it agreed to last year in Barbados.

After the U.S. granted those licenses, Venezuela, which relies heavily on oil revenues, negotiated a series of agreements with international companies seeking to recover the country’s collapsed oil production, which in July 2020 reached a historic low of 392,000 barrels per day.

Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world and at one point in its history produced up to 3 million barrels per day. The U.S. traditionally has been the main customer of Venezuelan crude oil, but sanctions imposed by the Trump administration in January 2019 cut off the South American country’s access to the U.S. market.

In the statement issued Wednesday night, the State Department said that the U.S. government remains “deeply concerned,” like other regional partners, about the decision made by the electoral council to block the registration of opposition candidates.

The council’s “acceptance of only those opposition candidates with whom Maduro and his representatives feel comfortable runs counter to competitive and inclusive elections that the Venezuelan people and international community will view as legitimate,” the State Department said.

“We continue to call on Maduro and his representatives to ensure international observer access, end the jailing and harassment of civil society and opposition members, allow all candidates to run and campaign, update the electoral registry, and release all unjustly detained political prisoners,” it added.

The decision taken by the electoral council this week creates the conditions for Maduro to easily win the presidential elections scheduled for July 28, even though his popularity in most polls is in the single digits.

Maduro, who had already been accused by the U.S. and 50 other countries of having stolen the 2018 elections, will now compete against 11 little-known candidates, who will divide the opposition vote among them.

The regime had previously announced that it would not allow Machado to participate in the elections. The opposition leader, who according to most polls would easily defeat Maduro with up to 70% of the votes, had named Yoris on Friday to run as her replacement, but the electoral did not allow her to register either.