Reluctant Detente

○ The US is changing tack in its dealings with Venezuela

On a Saturday morning in late November, a top deputy to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and a leader of a group of opposition parties met at a hotel in Mexico City to announce they’d reached a deal to unlock billions of dollars in frozen funds to rebuild the country’s crumbling infrastructure. The breakthrough agreement between bitter rivals was promptly blessed by the administration of President Joe Biden, which eased some sanctions hours later, allowing US driller Chevron Corp. to pump more oil in the country.

It was the most tangible evidence yet that Washington and its allies in Venezuela have changed course when it comes to Maduro, an authoritarian leader so despised only a few years ago that the Trump administration put a $15 million reward out for his arrest and slapped sanctions on his administration.

After years of failed US attempts at fostering regime change, Biden envoys began talks with the Maduro government in March, shortly after Washington banned Russian energy imports in response to President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The dialogue paved the way for a prisoner exchange in October. The US also demanded that Maduro restart negotiations with the opposition as a condition for any future concessions.

The rapprochement is driven, in part, by the Biden administration’s desire to do whatever it can to smooth out oil market disruptions that have sent prices soaring. Although years of government mismanagement has decimated Venezuela’s petroleum industry—oil production now averages about 690,000 barrels a day, compared with more than 2 million a day in 2017—the country still sits atop the world’s largest reserves.