U.S. Looks to Ease Venezuela Sanctions, Enabling Chevron to Pump Oil

In exchange for the significant sanctions relief, the government of Venezuelan President

Nicolás Maduro

would resume long-suspended talks with the country’s opposition to discuss conditions needed to hold free and fair presidential elections in 2024, the people said. The U.S., Venezuela’s government and some Venezuelan opposition figures have also worked out a deal that would free up hundreds of millions of dollars in Venezuelan state funds frozen in American banks to pay for imports of food, medicine and equipment for the country’s battered electricity grid and municipal water systems.

U.S. officials said details are still under discussion and cautioned that the deal could fall through, because it is contingent on Mr. Maduro’s top aides resuming talks with the opposition in good faith.

“There are no plans to change our sanctions policy without constructive steps from the Maduro regime,” Adrienne Watson, spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said.

If the deal goes through and Chevron, along with U.S. oil-service companies, are allowed to work in Venezuela again, it would put only a limited amount of new oil on the world market in the short term.

Venezuela was once a major oil producer, pumping more than 3.2 million barrels a day during the 1990s, but the state-run industry has collapsed over the past decade because of underinvestment, corruption and mismanagement. Sanctions leveled by the Trump administration further dented production and forced Western companies out of the country.

Any shift in U.S. policy that brings back Western oil companies would send a…