A state oil company PDVSA's logo is seen at a gas station in Caracas, Venezuela May 17, 2019. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado/File Photoof U.S. sanctions, two people familiar to the matter said on Thursday, moving to resume cash sales to global refiners.
Venezuela can now receive direct payments for goods or services under the license issued on Wednesday by the U.S. Treasury's Office for Foreign Assets Control, which oversees American sanctions. But even those agreements were limited to debt repayment deals, so little cash was reaching PDVSA's coffers, constraining its ability to expand oil production and exports.
China is Venezuela's main oil-export market, receiving some 430,000 bpd of crude and fuel this year, according to tanker tracking data. Before sanctions, India and the United States were other top destinations.through wide oil-for-debt deals, have not imported Venezuelan oil since the United States imposed secondary sanctions in 2020, so small refiners in China have been taking the Venezuelan cargoes instead.