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.
What is allowed in Venezuela's oil sector right now, and what just changed.
Venezuela Rulebook is a free tracker of every rule in Venezuela's oil sector: each US Treasury licence and every version of it, Venezuelan laws and decrees, and where the money goes, each linked to the official document. Free alerts when a rule changes.
What changed
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.
Official record first
Founded in 2026. Venezuela's oil rules change often and the record is scattered across US and Venezuelan agencies. The Rulebook keeps every rule, every version and every figure in one place, from the official record. Our mission and how we work →
Venezuela oil at a glance: rules, money, control and flows.
Independent, source-linked data on control, flows and rules in Venezuela's oil sector. Every figure links to its source document; official records first, press reports labelled until officially confirmed. Official government or company document Reported wire press, pending official confirmation Derived calculated by the project, method shown
Recent changes in control and rules
Datasets
Every map, chart and table published by the project, by theme. Each links to its source documents.
Field-to-buyer summary
Sellers and destinations are separate published totals; the sources do not say which seller's barrels went where.
Every flow dataset: exports by month, buyers, customs data, shipping, diluent →
Field control map
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.
Exports by destination
Monthly exports from Venezuela by destination, thousand barrels per day. Pick a month; routes start at the Jose terminal, which handles most exports.
Route width shows kb/d. Click a route or destination for the figure and its source. Base map © OpenStreetMap contributors · OpenMapTiles · OpenFreeMap.
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.
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 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.
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.
India imports and early US buyer snapshot
Logistics chain
Each stage of the chain with the companies publicly named as doing the work, and what the sources show.
Reported cargoes
| Date | Vessel | Class · flag | Seller / charterer | Cargo | Route |
|---|
Voyages named in the sources cited on each row.
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.
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.
Stakes by company
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 |
|---|
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
Every rule that governs Venezuela's oil sector
US and Venezuelan rules, filed by what they govern. Each rule has its own page: what it does, who it covers, its stated purpose, its key provisions, what changed and the official text.
All rules
Licence register: oil, PDVSA and CITGO
US sanctions on PDVSA remain in place; oil trade runs through OFAC general licences, which are amended often. For each licence: who it covers, what it allows, its conditions, what it excludes, its expiry, what changed in the latest version and every earlier version, each linked to the official text.
What changed in the latest versions
At a glance: all licences compared
One row per licence. Click a column heading to sort; click a licence to open its full terms below.
Full terms, licence by licence
Versions issued in 2026
Latest changes
Show recent OFAC actions
| Date | Action |
|---|
Every Venezuela general license
The full list as currently posted by OFAC. Oil, gas and PDVSA-related licenses are highlighted.
Show all Venezuela general licenses
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.
Venezuela's 2026 legal and fiscal framework
The January 2026 reform of the Organic Hydrocarbons Law and the July 2026 regulations that set royalties, taxes and contract types.
| Date | Rule | What it says | Sources |
|---|
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
Every dated change in Venezuela's oil rules and sector
Every dated change in control, rules and flows, newest first. Reported items are upgraded to official when a government or company document appears.
Key dates and explainers
One page per scheduled or official event: the documents, the facts they state and the record behind them. Updated when the event happens.
Coming up
Explainers
About the Venezuela Rulebook
Founded in 2026 · Independent · Free to read
What it is: a regulatory tracker, not a news outlet. We don't report or comment; we record what the official documents say, show what changed, and link to the source.
Our mission: verified transparency on the rules that shape investment in Venezuela, starting with oil. Every rule, every change and every figure, from the official record.
The problem
- The rules change constantly. US Treasury licences for Venezuelan oil are amended again and again, often with only days' notice.
- The record is scattered. Licences sit on the US Treasury's website, decrees in Venezuela's Official Gazette, payment rules in executive orders, and the figures across OPEC, the EIA, customs agencies and the press.
- Most coverage is prose, not a record. Alerts and news say that something changed. Few show exactly what changed, keep every earlier version, or separate official documents from press reports.
What the Rulebook does
One place that keeps every licence and every version, shows what changed between them, follows the money and the barrels, and labels every item Official or Reported with a link to the document.
Get free alerts Start with the licence register →
What the project does
It collates official documents (governments, regulators, OPEC, the US Energy Information Administration, company filings and releases) and reports from wire services, and presents them as maps, charts, tables and dated explainers. It does not publish estimates or opinions of its own. Every figure links to its source document; figures the project calculates, such as unit conversions or changes on the month, are labelled and show their method.
It is written for investors, analysts, traders, compliance teams, journalists and researchers who need to check a fact quickly and cite where it came from.
Independence
The Venezuela Rulebook is independent and is published under its own name.
Editorial standards
- Official first. Government documents, regulators, OPEC, EIA and companies' own filings are labelled Official. Reuters, Bloomberg, AP, AFP, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, Argus and S&P Global are labelled Reported until an official document confirms them. Wikipedia, wikis, blogs, newsletters and aggregators are never cited.
- One source minimum, always visible. No figure, field, company stake or event appears without at least one source; an automatic check blocks any publication that breaks this rule.
- Checked before publication. Headline figures and changes in control are checked against the source document before they are published, and each check is recorded.
- Disagreements shown, not resolved. When sources disagree (for example OPEC's estimate and Venezuela's own production figure), both are shown side by side.
- Dated and current. Every dataset shows the period it covers and when it was collected. Official datasets (EIA, OPEC, OFAC, US Census, Eurostat, Spain's CORES, UN Comtrade) are collected automatically every day; reported items are reviewed for official confirmation.
- Gaps stay gaps. Where information is not public, the project says so instead of estimating it.
Corrections
Errors are corrected as soon as they are found, and every correction to published data or text is listed here with its 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 project 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 we work
Every day the Venezuela Rulebook team collects official documents and data, scans news and filings for rule changes, tracks scheduled dates, checks that every figure carries a source, and reviews the site's security. We use AI tools for research, drafting and translation.
Automated checks run before anything is published: 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 then reviewed in an editorial 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.