US President Donald Trump's administration has invited the bosses of commodity trading houses Vitol and Trafigura to the White House on Friday for talks on marketing Venezuelan oil, four sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
European trading houses have traditionally dominated global oil trading and could help the US sell oil from Venezuela. This is despite Washington's preference for US majors to play the biggest role.
Geneva-headquartered Vitol has already received a preliminary licence from the US Government to begin negotiations for the import and export of oil from Venezuela for 18 months, four sources told Reuters on Thursday.
The White House has said it would be hosting US oil majors on Friday, but the invitation to trading houses has not been previously reported.
Reuters could not immediately obtain a full list of those invited to the meetings. Vitol and Trafigura, which was also formerly based in Geneva but is now headquartered in Singapore, declined to comment.
The White House did not comment on whether Vitol and Trafigura were invited.
The Trump administration set its sights on Venezuela's oil industry soon after US forces captured illegitimate President Nicolas Maduro on January 3. Washington has said it wants to control Venezuela's oil sales and revenue indefinitely.
The US Department of Energy said on Wednesday it was engaging with commodity marketers and banks to execute and to provide financial support for Venezuelan crude oil and fuel sales to the country. It did not specify which companies.
Trump has already said US companies will invest in Venezuela and rebuild its oil industry to produce more oil and bring global energy costs down.
Washington and Caracas agreed a deal this week to export some 30-50 million barrels of oil worth $2 billion to the United States.
However, US oil majors have said they want "serious guarantees" before they make investments. Years of under-investment and sanctions have led Venezuela's output to fall to around one million barrels per day, or just one per cent of global supply, from 3.5 million bpd in the 1970s.
Vitol and Trafigura were among the most active traders of Venezuelan oil prior to US sanctions in 2019. In the past, they have marketed Venezuelan oil received from state firm PDVSA’s European partners, which were US licence holders.
Their capacity to have tanker fleets in Venezuela quickly and trade barrels exceeds that of many joint venture partners. Yet they might not have first access to Venezuela’s crude.
"US majors are central to production, but large international trading houses bring global reach and optionality the majors lack," said Jean-Francois Lambert of consultancy Lambert Commodities. "It therefore makes clear sense for these traders to engage proactively with the US government to discuss next steps."
US oil major Chevron is in talks with the US Government to expand a licence to operate in Venezuela so it can sell to other buyers, as well as to increase exports to its own refineries, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
Under US licences, Chevron, India's Reliance, Italy's Eni, Spain's Repsol, France's Maurel Prom and China's CNPC have intermittently been the main traders of Venezuelan oil since sanctions were imposed in 2019.
(Reporting by Shariq Khan in New York, Arathy Somasekhar and Marianna Parraga in Houston, Dmitry Zhdannikov, Robert Harvey and Anna Hirtenstein in London, Julia Payne in Brussels and Aizhu Chen in Singapore; editing by Barbara Lewis and Jason Neely)
