India’s Reliance Industries has received approval from the United States to resume importing oil from Venezuela despite Washington’s sanctions, a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
The United States in April re-imposed sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sector in response to President Nicolas Maduro’s failure to meet his election commitments, but said some firms would be authorised to trade and operate in Venezuela.
The US Treasury Department declined to comment, while Reliance did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment. The news was first reported by Bloomberg.
Before U.S. oil sanctions were first imposed on Venezuela in 2019, Reliance was the second-largest individual buyer of Venezuelan crude after China’s CNPC.
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Reliance had re-submitted a request to the U.S. in May for authorisation to import crude oil from Venezuela, after the U.S. Treasury refused to grant licences to Indian refiners including Reliance following the easing of sanctions in October.
Indian refiners, however, resumed Venezuelan oil purchases through intermediaries, until the sanctions kicked in again in June.
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India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp has also sought a waiver from the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control to lift crude oil from Venezuela, an industry source said.
(Reporting by Nidhi Verma in New Delhi; Writing by Sudarshan Varadhan; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Jacqueline Wong and Rod Nickel)
