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UPDATED 15/05/2020 - The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) removed Nynas from its list of sanctioned entities yesterday. Nynas published a release, in which it claimed that PDVSA (Nynas' majority shareholder) had "...reduced the percentage of Nynas shares it owns to 15 percent of all shares currently issued.

The recent record of U.S. government intervention in Venezuela sucks. Is out with Operation Condor and Washington Consensus, in with putsch by tweet. Regime change nowadays is by betting on the wrong horse, siding with cabals of entirely useless allies, while continously overestimating charlatans and underestimating chavismo, which is the most formidable foe to have ever come out of Latin America. What the world needs, what the region and Venezuela, in particular, need is more Charlie Wilson and less John Bolton.

UPDATE 08/05/2020 - 09:55 GMT | Alex Saab adventures into oil aren't new. There was a time when he had to make use of "decent" intermediaries, like Jean Paul Rivas, in energy trading attempts. No more. U.S. Treasury sanctions have pushed PDVSA into Saab's arms. He is no longer toxic. His characteristic stench goes undetected in the company of Nicolas Maduro, Cilia, and Tareck el Aisami: Venezuela's new oil minister.

A restructuring proposal to take PDVSA back to its core business was making the rounds recently. Out with importing food, feeding chicken and building cardboard housing, in with amending laws to attract foreign investment and to allow PDVSA to become minority partner, recovering refineries, increase output and decrease taxes and royalties. U.S. sanctions, globe's oil glut, and the Chinavirus must have precipitated the move, which, has to be said, is and has been the only solution.

A question we get often, from analysts trying to make sense of what's happening with PDVSA's trading, finances, assets, etc., is: what's going on with crude deliveries? Maritime tracking apps / software are, in Venezuela's particular case, not fit for purpose, for these rely on vessels' AIS transponders to broadcast geolocations which are picked by terrestrial or satellite receivers. This information can then be seen on maps easily. But what happens when ships switch transponders off, which has become the new norm in most of the tankers involved with PDVSA?

Trying to stay relevant in politics is quite difficult in the best of times and places. Imagine how it looks for those with such aspirations, when, in the middle of current pandemic, their area of expertise is a banana republic cum failed State submerged in an abyss of corruption, like crisis-ridden Venezuela. Case in point Francisco Rodriguez, who went from an advisory role in Venezuela's Congress, to academia, to earn a living talking up -in stressed bond circles- chavismo's trustworthyness and ability to service its piling debt.