Venezuela has received $300 million in funds from oil sales, acting president says

Jan 20 (Reuters) – Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodriguez said on Tuesday that the country has received $300 million 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.

Trump said separately on Tuesday 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 $300 million 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.

“We should inform you that we have gotten funds, from the sale of oil, ‍and we have gotten, of the ​first $500 million, $300 million,” Rodriguez said at an event in ​Caracas. “These first funds will be used through the exchange market in ‍Venezuela, by national banks and the central bank, to consolidate and stabilize the market and protect the incomes and purchasing power of our workers.”

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 state company PDVSA, 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.

(Reporting by Reuters)