President Joe Biden and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro have agreed to a deal that eases the remaining U.S. sanctions on Venezuelan oil industry, according to reports. As part of the deal, Maduro will allow a competitive and internationally monitored presidential election in 2024.
The deal will be finalized during a meeting in Barbados on Tuesday, sources said.
Maduro won in a 2018 election that were criticized as fraudulent. He runs a repressive regime that is also on the international watchlist for harboring and financing terrorists.
“Venezuela remained a permissive environment for known terrorist groups, including dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the Colombian-origin ELN, and Hizballah sympathizers,” according to the U.S. State Department in 2020.
Venezuela is also still under a presidential Executive Order 13692, which declared a national emergency with respect to human rights violations, persecution of political opponents, suppression of press freedoms, use of violence and intimidation, and other abuses of power by the Venezuelan government. The order was put in place by President Barack Obama in 2015, kept in place by Presidents Donald Trump and Biden, and continued in a declaration by Biden in March of 2023.
“The situation in Venezuela continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. For this reason, I have determined that it is necessary to continue the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13692 with respect to the situation in Venezuela,” Biden said on March 1.
In 2022, Biden conducted a prisoner swap with Venezuela. In order to get back several wrongfully detained Americans, Biden exchanged two drug dealers who were referred to as the Maduro “narco nephews,” because of their blood relations with President Madura’s wife.
Efrain Antonio Campo Flores and Francisco Flores de Freitas, the narcotics traffickers who had been arrested in Haiti by U.S. drug enforcement agents for trafficking of 800 kilograms of cocaine they were planning to bring to New York City, were sent back to Venezuela in exchange for seven Americans, five of them business executives of Citgo Petroleum Corporation, and one who was a Marine Corps veteran, Matthew Heath, who had been held captive for two years.
Heath, who had been traveling in South America, was lured into Venezuela by its intelligence forces, and he was immediately arrested as soon as he set foot in the country. His dramatic story was told in the Miami Herald when he returned.
Then, in November of 2022, Chevron received permission from the Biden Administration to expand production in Venezuela to import to America, despite the existing sanctions and executive orders pertaining to the Maduro regime.
The lifting of oil sanctions by Biden administration reversed sanctions put in place by Trump
“The license to Chevron was issued the same day that the regime and the democratic opposition forces began a dialogue in Mexico City that was supposed to lead to less repression and some kind of political opening that would culminate in free elections in 2024. Moreover, the negotiations were supposed to produce a deal that would create a fund, overseen by the UN, to help ameliorate Venezuela’s horrendous humanitarian situation,” according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Recently, Biden also did a prisoner swap with Iran. On the anniversary of 9-11, Biden offered to swap five Iranians for five Americans, and sweetened the pot by unfreezing $6 billion in Iranian funds for the country, with which United States severed diplomatic relations in 1980. Iran is considered a terrorist state.
After Israel was attacked by Iran-backed Hamas at the end of September, the Biden Administration worked to refreeze the $6 billion, evidently stopping the transfer of the funds from banks in South Korea and Qatar.
U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, hearing the news about the new lifting of sanctions on Venezuela, issued a statement:
What’s the catch? The Big Guy gets %20?
Is there any enemy of the nation Grandpa Bloodstains won’t help? Any at all?
What’s the matter? Forensic accountants catch up to you and take away the money you stole?
You gotta give a little to get a little
I hear there’s a commodity market for hostages on the CME.
Greg, do you really believe that? Any “deals” with tyrants should never be considered bankable. Moreover, if there is a deal is should be closed-ended; that is, the quid-pro-quo should be delivered at deal closing.
If you want another 20 or 50 year war, then go ahead and keep doing what we’re doing because sanctions aren’t working. How are the sanctions affecting oil prices?
Has anything about the crossings at our Southern border slowed down. We can’t go in and level the place and start over. America doesn’t have the stomach for it. Maybe try a different approach.
Brandon! … “Wheelin’ & Dealin’ with Dictators” will surely generate revenues for the Big Guy and The Family. Thanks for your support Lisa-M, I’m sure it’s paying nice dividends and royalties for you, and your Tribe, too!
That’s rich, Sloppy Joe demanding a fair & honest election!
WHOSE 2024 election, Venezuelas, or OURS????
Free tickets to Aruba.
“On 10 November 2015, Campo Flores and Flores de Freites were flown into Port-au-Prince, Haiti by two Venezuelan military personnel accompanied by two presidential honor guards carrying more than 800 kilograms of cocaine destined for New York City”. Friends of Hunter’s, no doubt.
“Maduro won in a 2018 election that were criticized as fraudulent”- kindred spirits.
We should get free oil to refill our oil reserve that FJB took from with a false emergency.
Not that Joe or those supposedly concerned with such things care, but Venezuela is one of the dirtiest places on earth to produce oil. Grandpa Joe would prefer to shutdown one of, if not, the cleanest places on earth to produce oil in favor of a socialist country where oil production is fifty by comparison. This is today’s environmentally friendly left.
Both
The current President and his regime understand that high oil prices – particularly high gasoline prices – are a political liability. That is why they have drained the strategic oil supply since they have been in office. I strongly folks to wake up and understand that the federal government is being run by a manipulative criminal organization. (And for the record, Donald Trump ain’t a whole lot better. His is different but the chaos ensures failure.)
Very true
Wow Biden and Maduro have a lot in common.
Maduro has a couple drug dealing nephews caught with nearly 1800 lbs of cocaine headed for New York City.
Those are heavy haulers. They are as professional in the illegal drug trade as the Bidens are in blackmail and fraudulent money laundering.
How convenient for Joe to let the heavy smugglers go back to their drug trading business.
I am sure the US will be seeing more of their product heading north to the border as Joe enhances their trade agreements.
What ever it takes to boost the economy for those supporting terrorists and undermining the oil and gas production in all 50 states.
A weak America makes a great place for bad people to do bad things and get away with it.
La
hunter must have needed a price break – if there’s no money trail, maybe he won’t get busted again…
How about loosening restrictions on the US energy sector, Brandon?
Biden follows Obama advisors. He is a criminal in the White House along with his criminal wife, Jill Biden and his son and their whole family. He needs to be impeached and put on trial for the criminal that he is along with Jill and the Biden family.
I’ve always been perplexed on how our oil causes climate change while foreign oil doesn’t. Biden hates Americans and will do what his handlers tell him to sabotage us.
When the one guy widely regarded as having been the beneficiary of a rigged election gets cranky about other countries having rigged elections you know there’s a turd in the punchbowl.
If Venezuelan crude is the dirtiest of the world’s crude oil then how much more are the energy costs of refining Venezuelan oil over Alaskan oil??
Ultra marine needs to read yesterday’s ADN that reported US oil production reached an all time high in 2022, who was President in 2022? not the orange haired draft dodger
Biden never served…..
ADN is a pissrag that sources most of its articles from national publications, and you might want to check the numbers in that article, do you believe oil production was at an all time high in 2022? Where? Certainly not here in Alaska. Frank might want to read the Alaska journal of commerce.
Oh yeah what branch were you in Frank? Aren’t about the age of a vet who might have gone to viet nam? Or were you in college?
Wonder if pResident Briben will lift his (personally) imposed sanctions against US oil.
We need their oil when the Arabs embargo oil. My buddy my pal. Bet you wish you were read in huh?
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