The Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) El Palito refinery in El Palito, Venezuela, March 9.
Photo:
Manaure Quintero/Bloomberg News
The madness of the Biden Administration’s energy policy has been horrifying to watch, like a car crash except all Americans are passengers. The latest bizarre twist is that the White House may ease sanctions on Venezuela and its dictator
Nicolás Maduro
in an effort to increase the supply of oil on the global market.
The Journal reports that the U.S. is “preparing to scale down sanctions” on Venezuela’s nasty regime so
Chevron Corp.
can resume pumping oil. The move is contingent on the Maduro government entering good-faith talks with the political opposition, which is an oxymoron.
“There are no plans to change our sanctions policy without constructive steps from the Maduro regime,”
Adrienne Watson,
spokeswoman for the National Security Council, told the Journal. But the regime has never been willing to concede anything to the opposition. The likeliest result would be that Mr. Maduro opens talks, the U.S. eases sanctions (after the November election), and the talks go nowhere.
The Venezuela gambit is part of the Biden Administration’s rolling dictator tour to encourage more oil supply anywhere except in America. President Biden tried courting the Saudis, but this week they and OPEC+ chose to reduce production by two million barrels of oil a day. The Iran nuclear talks are supposed to liberate Tehran’s oil production, but the mullahs won’t take yes for an answer and are holding out for more U.S. concessions.
That leaves Venezuela, whose production and sales have fallen off a cliff thanks to its own socialist mismanagement and the sanctions imposed by the Trump Administration. Lifting sanctions now on the mere hope of political concessions in Caracas would reward the regime for impoverishing its people and creating a…
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