Venezuela: Trade Partnerships

Venezuela holds the world's largest proven crude oil reserves and has long built its trade around petroleum, which has historically accounted for roughly 80 percent of total exports. For decades, the country's largest trading partners were the United States, China, and India, though U.S. sanctions imposed on the government led by Nicolas Maduro reshaped these flows after 2019, pushing a growing share of Venezuelan oil exports toward China and intermediary shipping networks.

Venezuela's trade landscape shifted dramatically following a U.S. military operation that captured Maduro in January 2026 and brought an interim leadership under Delcy Rodriguez to power. As of February 2026, the U.S. Treasury Department granted new operating licenses to Chevron and the European majors BP, Eni, Repsol, and Shell to resume oil production and exports, with a senior U.S. energy official describing the long-standing embargo as "essentially over." The licenses required royalty payments to be routed through U.S. Treasury-designated accounts and barred the companies from partnering with China, Iran, or Russia in Venezuelan operations, curtailing Beijing's role in the sector even as output remained well below the roughly 3 million barrels per day Venezuela produced two decades earlier.

As of mid-2026, Venezuela's interim government and opposition representatives were engaged in ongoing transition talks covering judicial reform and the handling of frozen state funds abroad, developments that stood to further reshape the country's trade relationships and access to international financing. The reopening of the oil sector to major Western companies marked a significant departure from the trade patterns of the preceding decade, though the longer-term realignment of Venezuela's export markets remained closely tied to the pace and outcome of the political transition underway.