Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on January 15, 2026
3 min readLast updated: January 19, 2026
European oil companies, including Repsol and ENI, are applying for US licenses to export Venezuelan oil, as Washington considers easing sanctions.
By Georgina McCartney, Arathy Somasekhar and Marianna Parraga
HOUSTON, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Several European partners of Venezuela's state-run oil company PDVSA, including Spain's Repsol, Italy's ENI <ENI.MI> and France's Maurel & Prom, have applied for U.S. licenses or authorizations 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, while 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 licenses. 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 license requests, a U.S. Treasury spokesperson last week said the department would not comment on specific authorizations, but 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 authorizations for each one. Some requests had been submitted months ago, while others were re-submitted in recent days, the sources said.
U.S. oil companies, foreign refiners and global trading houses have also recently applied for Venezuela licenses, all of them related to the OPEC country's oil supplies, sources said.
The petitions from the European companies follow a first group of two authorizations granted last week to traders Vitol and Trafigura, which 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, where several trading firms lease storage tanks, local media reported.
Caracas and Washington this month agreed to a 50-million-barrel crude supply deal, the first step of Trump's ambitious $100 billion plan to reconstruct Venezuela's dilapidated oil industry.
Chevron is expected to receive an expanded license from the U.S. government this week that could allow for increased production and exports from the South American country, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
U.S.-based Valero Energy, India's Reliance and traders Mercuria and Glencore have also been in talks for licenses from Washington to do business with Venezuela, industry sources said. Marathon Petroleum confirmed in an email to Reuters that it was also in talks for a license.
(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)
PDVSA, or Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., is the state-owned oil and natural gas company of Venezuela. It is responsible for the country's oil production and export.
OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, is a group of oil-producing countries that coordinates and unifies petroleum policies to ensure stable oil markets.
A debt-recovery mechanism is a financial strategy used to recover outstanding debts, often involving the exchange of goods or services as repayment.
Oil exports are crucial for countries that rely on oil revenue for economic stability. They contribute to national income, trade balance, and foreign exchange reserves.
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