Venezuela in 2026: The Volatility of a Sanctions Regime
- Jul 30
- 9 min read
Anyone who built a Venezuela compliance policy eighteen months ago is working from a document that is now actively misleading. In the space of six months the United States has gone from maintaining one of its most restrictive sanctions programs, including a quarantine of shadow fleet tankers lifting Venezuelan crude, to issuing more than a dozen general licenses that specifically authorize chartering vessels, obtaining marine insurance, and dealing with Venezuelan port authorities. The underlying prohibitions have not been repealed. They have been layered over with authorizations that can be withdrawn at any time.
That combination is the point of this article. Venezuela is currently the clearest available illustration of a structural truth about sanctions compliance. The prohibition and the permission live in separate documents, they move at different speeds, and a counterparty screening process built around either one alone will fail.
Everything below reflects the position as of July 30, 2026. Given the pace of change in this program, verify the current status of any license before relying on it.
How the Position Reversed
The sequence matters, because it explains why the change was so abrupt.
On January 3, 2026, a U.S. military and law enforcement operation resulted in the capture and indictment of Nicolas Maduro. Six days later, on January 9, President Trump issued Executive Order 14373, which established special Treasury accounts described as Foreign Government Deposit Funds. That order contemplates money that is property of the Government of Venezuela being held by the U.S. Treasury as custodian, ultimately disbursed on instructions issued by the Secretary of State, and it purports to insulate those funds from attachment or similar encumbrance by Venezuela's creditors.
On January 29, OFAC issued General License 46, which commentators described as the most significant easing of U.S. restrictions on the Venezuelan oil sector in several years. What followed was a rapid sequence of further authorizations across oil, diluents, port operations, gold, minerals, financial services, and aviation.
The policy direction is explicit. Many of the licenses require that established U.S. entities participate in the licensed activity, which reflects a clear intent to facilitate U.S. investment and economic activity rather than to open the sector generally.
What Has Not Changed
This is the part operators get wrong, and it is the reason a general license is not the same thing as a lifted sanction.
U.S. sanctions on Venezuela remain in place. Unlike the repeal of the Syrian Sanctions Regulations, there has been no revocation of the underlying Venezuela-related legal authorities. The Venezuela Sanctions Regulations at 31 CFR part 591 still stand, as do the executive orders they incorporate, including EO 13850 of November 1, 2018, as amended by EO 13857 of January 25, 2019, and EO 13884 of August 5, 2019.
PdVSA remains a blocked person. It was designated on January 28, 2019 under EO 13850 for operating in Venezuela's oil sector, and that designation has not been withdrawn. Every transaction with PdVSA or with an entity in which PdVSA holds a fifty percent or greater interest, directly or indirectly, is still prohibited unless a license authorizes it.
The practical consequence is that OFAC could at any time revoke a general license, which would cause sanctions to snap back into place. Counsel across the market is advising companies to build contractual protections into any transaction undertaken in reliance on a general license, which is sound advice and is discussed further below.
General License 46C and the Maritime Scope
For shipowners, charterers, and cargo interests, GL 46 and its successors are the operative authorization, and the relevant text is unusually specific about shipping.
The license authorizes transactions ordinarily incident and necessary to the lifting, exportation, re-exportation, sale, resale, supply, storage, marketing, purchase, delivery, or transportation of Venezuelan-origin oil, including refining, by an established U.S. entity. OFAC clarified explicitly that this covers arranging shipping and logistics services, including chartering vessels, obtaining maritime insurance and protection and indemnity coverage, and arranging port and terminal services, including with port authorities or terminal operators that form part of the Government of Venezuela.
That is a direct answer to questions that had no clear answer for years. Chartering, P&I placement, and terminal dealings with government entities are covered, subject to the conditions.
The license has been amended three times, and the amendments are worth tracking because each changed the compliance perimeter. GL 46A, issued February 10, inserted language excluding payments for local taxes, permits, or fees from one of the conditions, with guidance at FAQ 1237.
GL 46B, issued March 13, expanded the license to cover Venezuelan-origin petrochemical products, though that authorization is narrower than the oil authorization because it applies only to importation into the United States rather than to direct export or reexport to third countries.
GL 46C, issued June 10 alongside amendments to GLs 47A, 48B, 50B, 51B, 52A, and 54A, relaxed the governing law and dispute resolution condition.
The Four Conditions That Actually Bind
Reading the authorization without the conditions is how firms end up in trouble. There are four, and each has operational consequences.
The established U.S. entity gate. The authorization runs to established U.S. entities, defined as entities organized under U.S. law on or before January 29, 2025. A company incorporated after that date does not qualify, and the market is still waiting on clarity about whether non-U.S. entities affiliated with established U.S. entities, and their U.S. person employees, fall within the authorization. That ambiguity has not been resolved by public guidance.
Governing law and dispute resolution. Any contract for authorized transactions with the Government of Venezuela, PdVSA, or PdVSA entities must require that the contract be construed and interpreted in accordance with the laws of a state or other jurisdiction within the United States, and that dispute resolution proceedings occur in the United States or the United Kingdom. The original GL 46 confined dispute resolution to the United States, and the June amendment widened it. For anyone accustomed to English law and London arbitration in charter parties and supply contracts, this condition requires deliberate drafting rather than reliance on standard forms.
Payment routing. Monetary payments to a blocked person must be made into the Foreign Government Deposit Funds established under EO 14373, or another account as instructed by the Treasury. Paying PdVSA through ordinary commercial channels is not authorized, whatever the underlying transaction.
Reporting. Any person who exports, re-exports, sells, resells, or supplies Venezuelan-origin oil to countries other than the United States must report to the Departments of State and Energy within ten days of the first such transaction and every ninety days thereafter. The reports must identify the parties involved, the quantities, values, and countries of ultimate destination, the dates the transactions occurred, and any taxes, fees, or other payments made to the Government of Venezuela. The retroactive and detailed nature of that reporting requirement suggests a broader U.S. concern about where the oil is actually going and which other states are involved.
There is also a set of party exclusions. The license does not authorize the involvement of certain categories of parties connected to Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, or China. For a market in which Venezuelan crude has flowed predominantly to Chinese buyers through opaque intermediaries, that exclusion is the condition most likely to be tripped inadvertently.
The Supporting Licenses
GL 46C does not operate alone, and knowing which license covers which activity matters when structuring a transaction.
GL 30B, issued February 10, authorizes transactions necessary to port and airport operations.
GL 47A authorizes the sale of U.S. origin diluents to Venezuela, which is commercially significant given that Venezuelan heavy crude requires blending to be exportable.
GL 48B authorizes the supply of certain items and services.
GL 49, issued February 13, authorizes negotiation of and entry into contingent contracts for certain investment.
GL 50B authorizes transactions related to oil or gas sector operations of certain entities.
GL 51B, originally issued March 6, covers Venezuelan-origin gold.
GL 55, issued March 27, authorizes negotiation and entry into contracts for new investment in the minerals sector, provided those contracts are made contingent on obtaining a separate specific license from OFAC.
Two further items are worth noting for their timing. GL 53, issued March 24, addresses official missions of the Government of Venezuela to the United States. GL 60, issued June 25, authorizes transactions related to earthquake relief efforts in Venezuela.
Separately, the CITGO position remains unresolved. GL 5X, issued June 18, further delayed the effectiveness of the authorization in GL 5 until August 4, 2026. Between October 24, 2019 and that date there is no authorization in effect licensing against subsection 1(a)(iii) of EO 13835 for holders of the PdVSA 2020 8.5 percent bond, which means transactions related to the sale or transfer of CITGO shares in connection with that bond are prohibited absent a specific license. That date falls five days from publication of this article, and the delay has been extended repeatedly since 2019.
Non-U.S. Persons and Secondary Sanctions
Operators outside the United States sometimes read a general license as irrelevant to them. That is a mistake in both directions.
Secondary sanctions allow OFAC to designate non-U.S. persons for activity considered contrary to U.S. sanctions policy even where those persons have no U.S. nexus. Under the Venezuela program specifically, non-U.S. persons can be sanctioned for providing material assistance to persons sanctioned under the program, including PdVSA. A general license that authorizes conduct for established U.S. entities does not by its terms protect a foreign shipowner or charterer, and whether particular conduct creates secondary sanctions exposure requires its own analysis.
At the same time, the general licenses signal a shift in U.S. policy priorities, which affects how enforcement risk should be assessed. Those are different questions and both need answering.
Snapback and the Contractual Response
The single most useful thing an operator can do about a general license regime is treat it as temporary in the contract itself.
GL 46 carries no expiration date, but it can be revoked at any time. The whole structure remains discretionary. A voyage fixed today under a valid license could, in principle, encounter a revoked license before completion, leaving performance prohibited mid-voyage.
The practical protections worth negotiating are the ones that allocate that risk explicitly. Sanctions clauses that address revocation of a general license rather than only the imposition of new sanctions. Termination and suspension rights triggered by loss of authorization. Clear allocation of costs where a voyage must be interrupted or a cargo redirected. Provisions addressing what happens to funds already routed into Treasury accounts. BIMCO's sanctions clauses are a starting point but were not drafted with a license-dependent trade of this kind in mind, and they need reviewing against the specific structure.
There are also adjacent authorizations to check. Companies shipping equipment to Venezuela for transactions authorized under GL 46 should confirm compliance with export controls, since some equipment may require separate licensing from the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security. Several of the licenses carry reporting obligations to the Departments of State, Energy, and Interior.
What This Means for Operators, Charterers, and Insurers
For shipowners and operators, the authorization of vessel chartering, marine insurance, and port and terminal services means Venezuelan trade is now available in a way it was not twelve months ago. It also means every fixture into that trade needs a documented license analysis at the time of fixing, confirmation that your charterer meets the established U.S. entity definition where the license depends on it, and verification that no excluded party connected to Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, or China sits anywhere in the transaction chain. Your P&I club should be consulted before the fixture rather than after, because the club's ability to respond to a claim on a voyage later found to be unauthorized is not something to discover during a casualty.
For charterers, traders, and cargo interests, the reporting obligation is the item most likely to be missed. Ten days from the first transaction is a short window, the required detail is substantial, and the obligation appears to reach non-U.S. persons who export, resell, or supply Venezuelan-origin oil to non-U.S. destinations under the license. Build the reporting process before the first cargo moves.
For everyone, the governing law condition deserves specific attention. A charter party or supply contract with a PdVSA entity on English law and London arbitration does not meet the condition, and standard forms will not comply without amendment.
The Broader Lesson
Venezuela is a case study rather than an isolated situation. The same structure appears across sanctions programs. A durable prohibition, a shifting layer of authorizations on top of it, and a compliance obligation that sits with the operator to know which layer applies on the day the transaction occurs.
The design consequence for any compliance process is that hardcoding a specific license number, threshold, or authorization into a policy document or counterparty questionnaire creates a maintenance liability that will eventually be missed. Venezuela has produced multiple amendments to a single license in six months. A questionnaire that asks a counterparty to identify and explain any sanctions nexus, and to attest to the authority they are relying on, remains accurate through every one of those changes. A questionnaire that names GL 46 does not.
That is the more useful takeaway than any current license number, and it is the one that will still be true when this article is out of date.
Nord Young provides comprehensive sanctions checks as a service, offering clear guidance on what the risks are, and deferring to external legal counsel when a transaction potentially violates regulations. If you struggle with fully understanding the sanctions framework, as most do, and want a second set of eyes on your upcoming shipment, let us know. We're happy to assist.
