Venezuela Received $300Mn in Funds From Oil Sales

• Venezuela's interim president Delcy Rodriguez this week noted that the country has received US$300Mn from oil sales, the first proceeds from U.S. President Donald Trump's announced 50-million-barrel oil supply deal with Caracas, following the capture of President Nicolas Maduro earlier this month. These first funds will be used through the exchange market in Venezuela, by national banks and the central bank, to consolidate and stabilise the market and protect the incomes and purchasing power of Venezuelan workers.
• Trump said separately on Tuesday, January 20, 2026, his country had taken the 50 million barrels out of Venezuela and was selling some of it in the open market, though shipping records show that volume has not yet been exported.
• Reuters reported last week that four Venezuelan banks had been notified by the country's government that they would split US$300Mn of oil revenues deposited in an account in Qatar, enabling them to sell dollars to Venezuelan companies that need foreign exchange to pay for materials.
• Elsewhere on Tuesday, Rodriguez's brother, lawmaker Jorge Rodriguez, said a reform of the country's main oil law, expected to be debated for the first time this week, will be based on a partnership structure first introduced during President Nicolas Maduro's administration, though he provided no details.
• Interim president Rodriguez told lawmakers last week that the government supported changes to the hydrocarbons law to boost foreign investment. The law has a single contract model of joint ventures controlled by the state company PDVSA (Petróleos de Venezuela), but the country has been introducing so-called 'productive participation contracts' for new partnerships in recent years, whose terms have not been fully disclosed. Those contracts are "a fundamental element to be expressed in the law's reform," Jorge Rodriguez told journalists.

(Source: Reuters)