WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday issued a general license to ease some sanctions on Venezuela's oil industry, authorizing established U.S. entities to engage in certain transactions involving Venezuelan crude.
The license allows for the "lifting, exportation, reexportation, sale, resale, supply, storage, marketing, purchase, delivery, or transportation of Venezuelan-origin oil, including the refining of such oil" under specified conditions.
A White House official confirmed that the authorization does not cover upstream crude production inside Venezuela, where currently only one U.S. oil company, Chevron Corp., operates under a special U.S. license, Bloomberg reported.
The license also requires that contracts with the Venezuelan government or state-run Petroleos de Venezuela be governed by U.S. law and specify that any disputes must be resolved in the United States.
According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the license does not authorize debt swaps or transactions involving cryptocurrency payments, and excludes dealings with countries including Russia, Iran, Cuba and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, as well as blocked vessels and China-related entities.
The move came as Venezuela on the same day approved a partial reform of its hydrocarbons law to allow greater private participation in the oil sector.
U.S. President Donald Trump insisted on Thursday that this license will benefit both the United States and Venezuela. "Venezuela will actually make for themselves more money than they've ever made before, and that's a good thing." Trump said at a meeting of his Cabinet on Thursday.
In a surprise raid in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas on Jan. 3, the U.S. military seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife and transported them to New York to stand trial on alleged drug charges.
Trump has said on multiple occasions in recent weeks that Washington intends to control Venezuela's oil sales and revenues indefinitely. ■