The Trump administration on Tuesday announced new sanctions on Russian oil company Rosneft for helping Venezuela skirt sanctions on oil exports meant to pressure the Maduro regime.
The sanctions, which target the oil giant’s Switzerland-based brokerage firm, are the latest Trump administration effort to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by choking off the flow of money to his government.
The penalties will freeze assets of Rosneft Trading S.A. within the U.S. and punish global partners of Rosneft, which is run by Igor Sechin, a close ally of Russian President Vladmir Putin. They also name Didier Casimiro, Rosneft’s president and chairman of its board of directors. The new sanctions will include a 90-day wind-down period for companies involved with Rosneft to disentangle their interests with the company.
The Rosneft sanctions come as the White House has sought avenues to ratchet up its maximum pressure campaign on Maduro and his regime’s backers — Russia being the largest — after an effort to replace him with opposition leader Juan Guaidó fizzled early last year. Trump welcomed Guaidó to the White House earlier this month and featured the opposition leader in his annual State of the Union address.
In a conference call with reporters, a senior Trump administration official on Tuesday described Rosneft’s actions as “critical” to bolstering Venezuela's vital oil industry, and accused Rosneft of handing a “lifeline” to the Maduro regime. White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien previewed the possibility of Rosneft sanctions earlier this month in a briefing with State Department officials.
A senior administration official portrayed Tuesday’s sanctions as the reaction to the “growing and increasingly central role of Rosneft in the affairs of Venezuela” over the last year.
Analysts have called Rosneft one of the main global conduits for Venezuelan crude, a leak in the U.S. pressure on Maduro that the Trump administration will seek to plug with Tuesday's sanctions. As an example, a senior Trump administration official said Tuesday the U.S. discovered last month that Rosneft shipped 2 million barrels of Venezuelan crude oil to West Africa.
But a senior administration official said that while Tuesday’s move was a “serious global action,” the White House was confident global energy markets would remain stable. The administration said it expects the global financial sector to back away from the Rosneft subsidiary.
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February 18, 2020 at 11:26PM
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Trump administration targets Russian oil company for helping Venezuela skirt sanctions - POLITICO
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