Versión en español. Los textos oficiales (licencias, citas, títulos de fuentes) y algunos registros se muestran en su idioma original, el inglés, para conservar su exactitud.
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The rules, by subject
For companies entering Venezuela's oil sector and those already operating in it: every US and Venezuelan rule, filed by what it governs.
The official record, checked on a schedule
| Source | What is recorded | Schedule |
|---|---|---|
| US Treasury, OFAC | Venezuela general licences, FAQs and sanctions designations | Daily |
| Federal Register | Executive orders and published licences | Daily |
| Gaceta Oficial de Venezuela | Laws, decrees and resolutions; oil-related issues identified and quoted | Daily |
| OPEC, EIA, US Census | Production, US imports and buyers, customs values, freight and insurance | Daily, as each is published |
| UN Comtrade, Eurostat, CORES | Imports reported by buyer countries | Daily, as each is published |
| Company filings and wire services | Company disclosures; press reports, labelled Reported | Daily |
Common questions
Is this legal or investment advice?
No. The Rulebook restates and links official texts for reference. It is not a legal interpretation and does not say whether any transaction is permitted. Always check the official text and take qualified advice. Legal notices →
How current is it?
Official sources are checked every day, and each item shows the date of its version and when it was collected. Some official sites publish late; when a document cannot be found on an official site, the site says so and names the sites checked.
Where does each figure come from?
Every figure, rule and event links to its source. Government and company documents are labelled Official; news agency reports are labelled Reported until an official document confirms them; anything the models calculate is labelled Derived, with its method. Methodology →
Is it free?
Yes. The Rulebook and its email alerts are free to read and use.
Who is behind it?
The Venezuela Rulebook is a model-based product founded in 2026. Automated models collect the official sources, record each change, draft summaries and translations, and run checks before anything is published. Every item links to its official source. About →
Exports by destination
How much oil Venezuela exports each month and where it goes, in thousand barrels per day, from tanker-tracking reports (labelled Reported). Switch to see who sold it.
Exports by destination, 2026
The hatched part is volume whose destination was not reported. Circles mark OPEC's production estimate; squares mark Venezuela's own figure (both from OPEC's monthly report). Click a month to show it on the map.
Export routes map, by month
Route width shows kb/d. Click a route or destination for the figure and its source. Base map © OpenStreetMap contributors · OpenMapTiles · OpenFreeMap.
Who buys Venezuelan crude
Imports of Venezuelan crude reported by buyer countries' own statistics, latest period per source, in one table. Filter by buyer or source; open a row for recent months.
Volumes reported in tonnes are converted at 6.5 barrels per tonne (Calculated); prices per barrel are the reported value divided by the converted volume.
Charts and tables by source
US imports of Venezuelan crude
Monthly, thousand barrels per day, as published by the EIA.
US weekly imports
EIA weekly preliminary imports, thousand barrels per day.
US importers and ports of entry
Crude oil imported from Venezuela by importing company, thousand barrels per day, by month.
Imports reported by buyer countries
Monthly imports of crude oil (HS 2709) with Venezuela as origin, as reported by each importing country. Volumes converted to kb/d at 6.5 barrels per tonne; price is customs value per barrel. China does not report Venezuela as an origin, so its purchases do not appear here.
Spain's imports of Venezuelan crude
EU imports of Venezuelan crude by country
Monthly crude imports (HS 2709) from Venezuela reported by EU member states. Usually a month fresher than UN Comtrade for EU buyers.
Crude production
Two measures, both published in OPEC's Monthly Oil Market Report: OPEC's estimate from secondary sources, and the figure Venezuela reports to OPEC directly ("direct communication").
| Month | OPEC estimate | Venezuela's figure | Difference* | Report |
|---|
US exports to Venezuela (crude and products, incl. diluent)
Crude oil and petroleum products shipped from the US to Venezuela, thousand barrels per day (EIA series MTTEXVE2). Reuters reports PDVSA typically imports about 100,000 b/d of naphtha and light crude to dilute its extra-heavy crude; OFAC GL 47B authorizes sales of US-origin diluents.
Sanctioned tankers linked to Venezuela
Vessels on the US Treasury's Specially Designated Nationals list under Venezuela-related programs, refreshed daily. Use the IMO number to look up current owner and position.
Official data release calendar
Official data release calendar
When the official series used on this site are next published, from each publisher's own schedule. Not obligations: dates when new data appear.
Control of Venezuela's oil fields
Which companies hold stakes in which fields, what kind of companies they are, and what changed. Every stake and label links to its source.
Each field is coloured by the type of company partnering with PDVSA. Click a field for owners and its profile. Positions approximate; NABEP circles show the areas named in sources, not exact fields. Base map © OpenStreetMap contributors · OpenMapTiles · OpenFreeMap.
North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP)
The largest change in control since 2007: a privately held company, partly owned by the US government, takes concessions over 17 fields. Where official sources and press reports differ, both are shown.
| Item | What the source says | Status | Source |
|---|
Fields named so far
| Field / project | Area | Before the deal | Status | Source |
|---|
Who holds each field
Every field and joint venture on file: partners and stakes, operator, and the legal basis it operates under. Filter or open a row for details and sources.
Companies in Venezuela's oil sector
Every company with a stake on file: what kind of company it is, where it holds stakes, and the OFAC licences whose text names it.
More views: stakes chart, directory, full register, company disclosures, production by company
Stakes by company
Company and field directory
One profile per company and per field: stakes, operator, company type, changes and sources.
Companies
Fields and joint ventures
Field ownership register
Joint ventures, production-sharing contracts and state-run assets. Click a row to see it on the map.
| Asset | Area | Ownership | Operator | Status |
|---|
Company disclosures
Each company's own reported Venezuelan volumes and plans. Companies report on different bases (gross vs net, oil vs oil-equivalent), so compare with care.
| Company | Disclosed volume | Period | Trend and plans | Sources |
|---|
Production and drilling activity by company
Disclosed output by company
Drilling and field services
Rules: what is allowed today
Every rule on file from the United States, Venezuela and other governments, in one table: filter by activity, jurisdiction, subject, type or status, and open any row for its details. Each rule also has its own page with its stated purpose, every version and the official text.
Find a rule
Activities grouped from each licence's title and scope by the Rulebook's automated models; check the full terms on the licence's page.
By subject: what the rules govern
Each subject page shows its US, Venezuelan and international rules together, with then-and-now comparisons.
Venezuela: rules by legal rank
Venezuelan rules ordered by legal form, from the Constitution down, as each instrument is named in the Official Gazette. Accords express the National Assembly's position and are not laws.
Coverage and sources
What the Rulebook's automated models have on file, what is still being researched, and when each official source was last collected.
Venezuelan instruments in the research queue
Show all OFAC general licences
The full list of Venezuela general licences as currently posted by OFAC. Licences tracked in the Rulebook link to their page; others link to OFAC.
Show recent OFAC actions
| Date | Action |
|---|
Oil money: where payments for Venezuelan oil go
Under US rules, royalties and taxes owed to Venezuela's state and PDVSA on licensed oil sales are paid into US Treasury accounts, not to Venezuela directly. What the documents say, the amounts officials have stated, and what has not been published.
Amounts stated by officials
| Date | Amount | Statement |
|---|
Not published
Timeline
Every fact on the money, with its source
Changes: what changed, and how it differs
Three views of change: the dated log of every rule change, the changes in each new licence version, and then-and-now comparisons of today's rules with the rules before them. Reported items are upgraded to official when a government or company document appears.
Log
What changed in each new licence version
One line per amended licence; the full change, every version and the official text are on each licence's page.
Latest versions
Versions issued in 2026
Sanctions on Venezuela's oil sector, 2017 to today
Every key official action and every OFAC licence version on file, in date order, each linked to its official text.
How today's rules differ from before
Each comparison quotes the earlier official text and the text in force today, and states only what the two texts show changed.
Venezuela's Official Gazette: oil-related issues
Venezuelan laws, decrees and resolutions take legal effect when they are published in the Official Gazette. Every issue posted on the official Gazette site is read daily. Issues that mention hydrocarbons, PDVSA, joint ventures, royalties or the Ministry of Hydrocarbons at least three times are listed here, with their table of contents quoted in the original Spanish and a link to the official PDF.
Duties & deadlines: what must be done, and by when
Obligations stated in the rules on file (OFAC licence conditions and Decree 5,381), and dated licence deadlines. Quoted from the official texts; this is not a compliance checklist and not advice.
Obligations
What must be reported or filed, to whom and when, quoted from the official text. Deadlines that start from an event (a first transaction, a signed contract, the start of a financial year) are stated as in the text.
Dated deadlines
Explainers
One page per scheduled or official event: the documents, the facts they state and the record behind them. Updated when the event happens.
About The Venezuela Rulebook
The Venezuela Rulebook is a free website, founded in 2026, that records the rules governing Venezuela's oil sector from official sources: US sanctions and licences, Venezuelan laws, decrees and the Official Gazette, and other governments' sanctions. For each rule it shows the official text, every version on file, what changed and how it differs from the rule before. It does not give advice, opinions or forecasts.
Coverage
Sources checked
| Source | What is recorded | Schedule |
|---|---|---|
| US Treasury, OFAC | Venezuela general licences and their versions, FAQs, sanctions designations | Daily |
| Federal Register | Executive orders and published licences | Daily |
| Gaceta Oficial de Venezuela | Laws, decrees and resolutions; oil-related issues identified and quoted | Daily |
| EUR-Lex, legislation.gov.uk | EU and UK Venezuela sanctions regulations | When amended |
| OPEC, EIA, US Census, UN Comtrade, Eurostat, CORES | Production, exports, imports by buyer country, customs values, freight | Daily, as each is published |
How items are labelled
- Official Government, regulator and company documents, quoted or restated with a link to the text.
- Reported News agency reports, kept until an official document confirms them.
- Derived Comparisons, classifications and figures derived from official texts or data by the Rulebook's automated models, with the method and the time of the last update shown.
In development
Planned; not yet available.
- Side-by-side text of each new licence version against the previous one.
- A weekly email: rule changes of the week and dates due the next week.
- A sanctions timeline from 2017 to today, from the official texts.
- More governments' rules under International, once their texts are checked.
Corrections
Corrections made to published data or text are listed here with their date. Routine data updates (a new month, a revised figure from the publisher) are not corrections and appear in the change log.
Privacy
The site sets no cookies, has no accounts and runs no advertising trackers. Visits are counted with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which is cookieless and reports only aggregate figures (pages, countries, referring sites). Fonts (Google Fonts), chart and map code (cdnjs) and base-map tiles (OpenFreeMap) are loaded from third-party servers, which receive the visitor's IP address as part of any web request.
Email updates. If you sign up, your email address is stored in the project's own Cloudflare account with the date and the page you signed up from, only to send you Rulebook updates. It is never sold or shared. To stop automated abuse, sign-up attempts are counted per hour under a one-way scrambled code of the network address; the address itself is not stored and the count expires after an hour. If the project later sends through a newsletter service, the list moves there and this page will name it. To unsubscribe or have your address deleted, write to [email protected].
Contact and corrections requests
Legal notices and terms of use
Notices
Terms of use
Privacy: see Privacy. Corrections: see Corrections.
Sourcing methodology
Labels
Official A government document (Gaceta Oficial, ministries, White House, State Department, Treasury/OFAC, EIA, OPEC, customs agencies) or a company's own filing or press release.
Reported Wire press (Reuters, Bloomberg and similar), shown until an official document confirms it. When sources disagree, all versions are shown side by side.
Derived Calculated by the Rulebook's automated models from published figures (for example tonnes to barrels, or shares of a total); the method is stated next to the number.
The project does not estimate, forecast or give opinions.
How the models work
Every day The Venezuela Rulebook's automated models collect official documents and data, scan news and filings for rule changes, track scheduled dates, check that every figure carries a source, and review the site's security. Summaries, explainers and translations are generated by the models from the cited sources.
Automated checks run on each update: every record must cite a source, official records are preferred, press reports stay labelled until an official document confirms them, and calculated figures state their method. Each day's changes are summarised in a daily brief.
Every change is dated in the change log, and every figure links to the document it comes from, so any statement can be checked independently.
Disclaimer
All legal notices and terms of use →
The Venezuela Rulebook collates and displays publicly available information for reference only. It is not investment, legal, tax or trading advice, and nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security or commodity, or to enter into any transaction. Figures are shown as published by their sources, which may revise, contradict or withdraw them; the project does not verify them independently and makes no warranty as to accuracy, completeness or timeliness. "Reported" items are press reports not yet confirmed by an official document. Nothing here is a statement on the legality of any transaction under US, Venezuelan or other sanctions or laws; check the primary documents and take professional advice before acting.
Sources
Every source cited on the site, with its label.