Several European partners of Venezuela's state-run oil company PDVSA, including Spain's Repsol, Italy's Eni and France's Maurel Prom, have applied for US licences or authorisations to export oil from the OPEC country, six industry sources told Reuters.
The requested terms are similar to those granted by Washington in past years, which allowed the companies to receive and export Venezuelan oil for their refineries and other customers. They also allowed for supplying fuel to Venezuela through a debt-recovery mechanism, two of the sources said.
The companies have not been able to export Venezuelan oil since the second quarter of last year, after the administration of President Donald Trump suspended the licences. Repsol participated in a meeting last week at the White House, where Trump asked a group of oil companies to invest in Venezuela.
Repsol and Eni declined to comment. Maurel Prom did not immediately respond to a request for comment. When asked about Venezuelan licence requests, a US Treasury spokesperson last week said the department would not comment on specific authorisations.
However, Washington has said it plans to ease sanctions on Venezuela, imposed since 2019, following its capture of President Nicolas Maduro. PDVSA's European partners are involved in multiple projects in Venezuela and might need individual authorisations for each one.
Some requests had been submitted months ago, while others were re-submitted in recent days, the sources said. US oil companies, foreign refiners and global trading houses have also recently applied for Venezuela licences, all of them related to the OPEC country's oil supplies.
The petitions from the European companies follow a first group of two authorisations granted last week to traders Vitol and Trafigura. This allowed the first $500 million in oil sales, a government official said on Wednesday.
At least two tankers have departed from Venezuela in recent weeks carrying the exports to terminals in the Caribbean, according to shipping data. Curacao's port authority said on Wednesday that one of the vessels arrived at the government-managed Bullen Bay terminal on the Caribbean island.
Several trading firms lease storage tanks at this terminal, local media reported. Caracas and Washington this month agreed to a 50-million-barrel crude supply deal.
This is the first step of Trump's ambitious $100 billion plan to reconstruct Venezuela's dilapidated oil industry. Chevron is expected to receive an expanded licence from the US Government this week that could allow for increased production and exports.
US-based Valero Energy, India's Reliance and traders Mercuria and Glencore have also been in talks for licences from Washington to do business with Venezuela. Marathon Petroleum confirmed in an email to Reuters that it was also in talks for a licence.
(Reporting by Georgina McCartney, Arathy Somasekhar, Marianna Parraga, Jarrett Renshaw and Pietro Lombardi; Additional reporting by Francesca Landini and America Hernandez; Editing by Nathan Crooks, Mark Potter and Diane Craft)
