Venezuela News — Shell and Argentina's Aldyl start drilling in Venezuela

Big oil put dates on the calendar this week: Shell set a 2027 target to start drilling the offshore Loran gas field, Venezuela's most important gas prize. In Washington, OFAC eased more rules even as the earthquake-relief license stays live only through October 23, and a Miami court ordered Nicolas Maduro to pay $314 million for torturing three Americans.

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Shell targets 2027 to begin drilling Venezuela's flagship offshore gas field. Shell has set a 2027 timeline to start drilling at Loran, the offshore gas field on the Venezuela-Trinidad maritime border that holds an estimated 7 trillion cubic feet of gas. The move builds on five agreements Shell signed with Venezuela on June 11, though no final investment decision has been made yet. Reuters

OFAC keeps loosening Venezuela rules, but the earthquake-relief license expires October 23. OFAC issued a new batch of Venezuela guidance on July 17, easing governing-law terms on existing licenses and clarifying aviation-safety and disaster-relief transactions. The one compliance teams should watch is General License 60, the earthquake-relief authorization, which expires at 12:01 a.m. ET on October 23, 2026; firms structuring relief payments should treat that as a hard deadline. Cleary Gottlieb

Miami court orders Maduro to pay $314 million; Delcy Rodriguez claims head-of-state immunity. A federal judge in Miami ordered Nicolas Maduro, financial operator Alex Saab, and other regime figures to pay $314 million to three U.S. citizens detained and tortured in Venezuela before their 2023 release; none of the defendants contested the case. Acting president Delcy Rodriguez was provisionally excluded after her lawyers argued she has sovereign immunity as a sitting head of state, a claim the plaintiffs reject. MercoPress

Jorge Rodriguez confirms a working table with the 2015 National Assembly deputies. National Assembly head Jorge Rodriguez confirmed a formal working table between the chavista-controlled legislature and deputies from the opposition-elected 2015 National Assembly, with a joint agenda due around August 1. Caracas Chronicles reports the track carries U.S. backing, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio supporting it, though the sides remain far apart on what a credible election requires. El Nacional

Politics

Fourteen House Democrats press Trump to lift 'indiscriminate' Venezuela sanctions. Fourteen House Democrats, including Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, urged President Trump to immediately lift sanctions on Venezuela, arguing they are hampering earthquake relief and reconstruction. The lawmakers cited UN damage estimates as high as $37 billion, near a third of Venezuela's GDP, and called the four-month relief license insufficient; the White House has so far declined broader relief. Venezuelanalysis

A planned release of Maduro's political prisoners stalls after the earthquakes. A wave of political-prisoner releases the Venezuelan government had announced before the late-June earthquakes has since stalled, with only six people freed. As of July 6, 372 remained jailed, including 37 foreign nationals, according to Foro Penal, the NGO that tracks the count.Infobae

Energy Sector

El Palito refinery restarts its gasoline unit after quakes cut power. Venezuela's smallest refinery, the 146,000 barrel-per-day El Palito plant, restarted the unit central to gasoline production after last month's earthquakes cut its power. It is now processing about 35,000 barrels a day, and the oil ministry says fuel supply is secured nationwide. Arab News

Venezuela's oil revival runs into an oilfield-services bottleneck. The main constraint on Venezuela's production recovery is no longer policy but rigs and services: the oil ministry needs 93 active rigs by 2028, well above today's levels, per an OilPrice analysis. Even so, output could rise about 194,000 barrels a day (roughly 17%) by late 2028, with Chevron, the largest foreign operator, expected to deliver nearly two thirds of the gains from existing fields. OilPrice

India's appetite for Venezuelan crude holds firm despite the earthquakes. Indian refiners' purchases of Venezuelan crude are set to stay strong even after the June earthquakes briefly disrupted PDVSA terminals, keeping India a key non-U.S. outlet for Venezuelan barrels. Steady Asian demand puts a floor under export revenue and strengthens Venezuela's hand as debt-restructuring talks get underway. S&P Global

Argentina's Aldyl Energia lands drilling rigs for an Orinoco Belt campaign. Aldyl Energia, an Argentine oil-services firm operating in Venezuela since 2022, took delivery of four drilling rigs at Guanta port on July 8, with three more due in September ahead of an August start at the Morichal Pesado field in the Orinoco Belt. The company has committed about $100 million and is targeting 80,000 barrels a day by end-2027. Guacamaya

Economy

Venezuela's peer-to-peer USDT trading hits $1.39 billion, rivaling oil-export revenue. Roughly $1.39 billion of the dollar stablecoin USDT changed hands on Binance's peer-to-peer market between June 11 and July 13, about $44 million a day, per local research house Ecoanalitica. That equals about 64% of the hard currency the central bank supplied all of June; USDT traded near 840 bolivars against an official rate of 727, a gap of about 15%. crypto.news

A regional development bank puts Venezuela's reconstruction bill above $15 billion. Development bank CAF estimates Venezuela's earthquake reconstruction will top $15 billion after the June 24 quakes killed nearly 3,900 people and destroyed some 1,400 buildings. Caracas set up a $200 million fund and launched a 'Gran Mision Venezuela Renace' program, while the World Bank, IDB and CAF have offered grants and credit lines. The United States has pledged about $386 million across humanitarian and bilateral channels. Guacamaya

Opinion

Orinoco Research: relations warming, but the FX plumbing is still clogged. In its second-quarter macro report, investor-research firm Orinoco Research frames U.S.-Venezuela ties under Trump and Rodriguez as influence-building rather than regime change, and projects oil output reaching 1.3 million barrels a day by end-2026. It flags a persistent gap between the various dollar-bolivar rates, tracing it partly to delays in oil revenue moving through U.S. Treasury accounts before reaching Venezuelan ones. Orinoco Research