Sechin, formally out of government but still Rosneft chief and part of Putin’s inner circle, now controls at least 13 percent of the energy business in Venezuela.
He visits the country frequently, increasingly as landlord rather than collaborator.
“We will never leave, and no one will be able to kick us out,” Sechin said last year, according to Russia’s Tass news agency.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-venezuela-russia-pockets-key-energy-assets-in-exchange-for-cash-bailouts/2018/12/20/da458db6-f403-11e8-80d0-f7e1948d55f4_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2a93a46b3116_
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"The Trump administration has previously weighed imposing sanctions against Venezuelan oil, but Trump ultimately rejected taking that additional step after an internal analysis showed it would lead to an increase in US gas prices.
A full oil embargo would cause gas prices to rise by 15 cents a gallon for about six months, a former senior administration official said of the analysis."
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/15/politics/trump-juan-guaido-venezuela/index.html
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"The White House on Friday announced a new round of sanctions against Venezuela that explicitly exempt the U.S. arm of the country’s state-owned oil company.
That company, Citgo, donated six-figure sums to Trump’s inauguration and recently hired former Trump officials to lobby for that exemption.
"Since 2014, Citgo, a Delaware corporation, has fought to insulate its operations from measures aimed at punishing the Maduro regime’s efforts to consolidate political power.
Under the administration of President Donald Trump, those efforts entailed beefing up its D.C. influence operation with lobbyists with deep ties to the president’s political operation.
In April, it hired Avenue Strategies, the firm co-founded by former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and campaign adviser Barry Bennett.
Since then, Citgo has paid Avenue Strategies $160,000 to lobby the White House, the Treasury Department, the Justice Department, and the Energy Department on the “potential impact of U.S. energy and foreign policy restrictions on CITGO Petroleum Corporation's operations and valuation of assets,” according to disclosure filings.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-just-gave-a-big-carve-out-to-citgo-an-oil-giant-repped-by-his-ex-aides
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Russia now owns significant parts of at least five oil fields in Venezuela, which holds the world’s largest reserves, along with 30 years’ worth of future output from two Caribbean natural-gas fields.
Venezuela also has signed over 49.9 percent of Citgo, its wholly owned company in the United States — including three Gulf Coast refineries and a countrywide web of pipelines — as collateral to Russia’s state-owned Rosneft oil behemoth for a reported $1.5 billion in desperately needed cash.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-venezuela-russia-pockets-key-energy-assets-in-exchange-for-cash-bailouts/2018/12/20/da458db6-f403-11e8-80d0-f7e1948d55f4_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2a93a46b3116
In 2016, Caracas put up 50.1 percent of Citgo as collateral for a new crop of bonds, allowing it to pay off its most pressing debts.
When Russ Dallen, a Florida-based managing partner at the brokerage Caracas Capital Markets, sifted through court filings in Delaware, where Citgo’s holding company is based, he found that Rosneft had reached a deal that had pumped $1.5 billion into Venezuela in exchange for a lien on the other 49.9 percent of Citgo.
With assumptions that Citgo, if sold, could be worth between $6 billion and $9 billion, the arrangement amounted to a sweetheart deal — and, in addition, the Russians had managed to lay claim to almost half of a major U.S. oil giant. "
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"The company, based in Houston, wrote off $647 million in Venezuela last year.
Schlumberger, Halliburton’s principal global competitor, took a pretax write-down of $938 million in Venezuela late last year.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/23/business/halliburton-venezuela-pdvsa.html
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