Chevron returned oil shipments to the Venezuelan regime in the face of Trump's restrictions

The vice president of Venezuela's socialist dictatorship, Delcy Rodríguez, announced through her Telegram account that the U.S. oil company Chevron returned at least two oil shipments to the Venezuelan state company PDVSA as a result of the "restrictions" imposed by the Administration of the U.S. presidentDonald Trump against the Chavista dictatorship. In March, the Republican president decided not to renew Chevron's license to both operate and export crude oil from Venezuela, which will officially expire on May 27.

"Chevron has returned crude oil shipments to PDVSA, given the impossibility and restrictions imposed on it to pay for them to Venezuela. PDVSA will respect the terms and contractual obligations agreed with the transnationals. In Venezuela there are laws, and they are respected", detailed the vice-president via Telegram. Although Rodriguez added that the oil was "being traded in international markets", she did not detail which countries would be buying Venezuelan crude, a fact that drew attention among numerous analysts considering that the United States recently imposed secondary tariffs on buyers of the South American country's crude.

Awaiting documentation

Different media explained that Chevron was waiting for the official customs documentation to return the crude cargoes to the ports, after the Venezuelan state oil company cancelled on Thursday the authorization to leave the two vessels chartered by the U.S. company after finishing the loading. Similarly, PDVSA formally suspended loading permits to four other Chevron vessels, which began sailing on Friday, according to shipping data revealed by the global financial group London Stock Exchange Group.

The news comes at a time when Trump seems once again willing to confront the Venezuelan regime, as happened during his first administration, in which the policy of regime change was what marked the relationship between the Republican leader and socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro. Although both seemed to bring positions closer after the agreements reached at the migratory level, following the meeting of the White House special envoy, Richard Grenell, with Maduro and other officials of the Venezuelan regime at the Miraflores Palace, the latest measures taken by Trump in oil matters seem to indicate that these would be more of a determined confrontation rather than a negotiation strategy.