Washington, Jan. 30 -- The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday issued a general license to ease some sanctions on Venezuela's oil industry, authorizing established U.S. entities to engage in certain transactions involving Venezuelan crude.
The license allows for the "lifting, exportation, reexportation, sale, resale, supply, storage, marketing, purchase, delivery, or transportation of Venezuelan-origin oil, including the refining of such oil" under specified conditions.
A White House official confirmed that the authorization does not cover upstream crude production inside Venezuela, where currently only one U.S. oil company, Chevron Corp., operates under a special U.S. license, Bloomberg reported.
The license also requires that contract...