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Venezuela's Oil Ministry has suspended 19 lipid production-sharing contracts with backstage companies signed nether the medication of President Nicolas Maduro, 4 sources with cognition of the determination told Reuters connected Thursday (February 26, 2026).
The suspension has had nary interaction connected the country's lipid and state output truthful far, the sources said. State lipid elephantine PDVSA is selling the crude produced nether the contracts portion they are suspended, they added.
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Caracas and Washington would reappraisal the contracts and whitethorn urge revoking immoderate of them, the sources said. The Venezuelan and U.S. governments are reviewing the credentials of the companies that signed them, the sources added. Some of the companies are little-known and the deals were signed portion Venezuela was nether U.S. sanctions.
The contracts nether reappraisal see projects that recently began producing lipid successful challenging areas specified arsenic Lake Maracaibo, large ventures that purpose to grow output successful the Orinoco Belt, Venezuela's main lipid region, and tiny mature oilfields.
Mr. Maduro's medication had small occurrence securing concern done the production-sharing declaration exemplary arsenic ample oil players rejected a instrumentality to Venezuela aft expropriations oregon avoided doing concern with it owed to U.S. sanctions.
The players that took connected production-sharing contracts included Chinese, U.S., South American and Venezuelan firms, arsenic good arsenic immoderate companies registered successful taxation haven countries, and immoderate obtained contracts successful aggregate areas, according to a database seen by Reuters.
Some of the companies besides outsourced the oilfields to contractors, 2 of the sources said.
The United States captured Mr. Maduro successful January and took power of Venezuela's lipid exports and sales. Since then, the U.S. Treasury Department has issued wide licenses that let companies to commercialized Venezuela's lipid and to run successful the country's lipid and state sectors, but necessitate circumstantial clearance by the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control.
Venezuela's National Assembly passed a betterment to the country's hydrocarbon instrumentality successful precocious January to facilitate overseas concern successful the dilapidated lipid industry. Under the reformed law, the authorities has six months to reappraisal existing contracts.
Venezuela's ministries of lipid and communications and the White House did not instantly reply to a petition for comment.
The ministry and PDVSA are separately successful talks with galore of Venezuela's accepted joint-venture partners, including Chevron, Repsol and Maurel & Prom, to let them to grow the oilfields already assigned to their projects, which could lend to accrued crude and state output.
