Washington moved aggressively back into Venezuela’s oil sector on Thursday, sanctioning Maduro family members, a longtime business ally, and six companies operating tankers that have kept PDVSA’s exports alive through opaque shipping practices. It’s the clearest sign yet that the brief thaw under Biden is over, and that the Trump administration intends to put real teeth back into the sanctions regime.
At the center of the new action are three nephews of Cilia Flores, Maduro’s powerful wife. Two of them, better known in Caracas as the narco-nephews, were convicted in U.S. courts for attempting to smuggle hundreds of kilos of cocaine into the United States before receiving clemency in 2022. Treasury says both men walked straight back into the drug trade upon returning to Venezuela. They’re now re-designated under counter-narcotics authorities, along with a third nephew, Carlos Erik Malpica Flores, who had been removed from the SDN list during Biden-era negotiations that ultimately went nowhere.
Treasury also went after a familiar target: Venezuela’s oil lifeline. Six shipping firms and six tankers—many flagged in the Marshall Islands, Panama, or the Cook Islands—were blacklisted for moving Venezuelan crude while using deceptive AIS practices to mask their routes. Several of the tankers, including the WHITE CRANE and KIARA M, loaded barrels as recently as October and are now frozen out of the U.S. financial system.
Venezuela’s oil sector isn’t collapsing overnight—it’s been grinding down for years. What remains of PDVSA’s export machine is held together with patchwork fixes, aging joint-venture wells, and a revolving door of tankers that try to stay one jump ahead of sanctions. Most of the crude that still leaves the country does so clandestinely, cutting their transponders, drifting offshore until dark, and swapping cargoes in the middle of nowhere. The new Treasury designations hit directly at that remaining workaround, shrinking an already narrow export lane.
The move lands as Trump escalates pressure across multiple fronts—military, political, and economic. In recent months, U.S. forces have seized a tanker off Venezuela’s coast and struck dozens of alleged narcotics vessels. Experts warn that even if Maduro were forced out, reviving Venezuela’s energy sector would require tens of billions in capital and a decade of stability—both of which remain out of reach. For now, Treasury’s message is simpler: the window for sanctions evasion has narrowed, and Washington is back in the enforcement business.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
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