AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Since the U.S. captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January, Venezuela has been steadily producing and exporting more oil, recently hitting a seven-year high. It adds up to billions of dollars in revenue, and it's being controlled by the United States. Both countries have promised transparency, but there are a lot of unanswered questions. Joining us now is Roxanna Vigil. She's a fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations and previously served as a senior sanctions policy adviser at the U.S. Treasury Department. Thank you so much for being with us.
ROXANNA VIGIL: Thank you, Ayesha.
RASCOE: President Trump has said that proceeds from selling Venezuelan oil would be, quote, "used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States." Where is the money going, and how is this all working?
VIGIL: Yeah. So based on the research that I have done into some of the data that is out there, we have a sense of where some of the oil exports that the U.S. government is controlling is going. But we don't understand yet what the money flows look like because the Trump administration has not shared any comprehensive information. The little that we do know is largely based from congressional testimony from Secretary Rubio and other Trump administration officials that essentially have said the billions of dollars that are flowing through the system at first went through an account in Qatar. It's not clear how that was set up, but Secretary Rubio said that was a short-term mechanism. And what's replaced that is a longer-term mechanism that the U.S. Treasury is controlling.
And based on my calculations, which looked at how much oil has been exported out of Venezuela in the first four months since January 3, and looking at the price of oil and the discount that Venezuelan oil is sold at because it is a heavier, more sour oil, my estimate is that about $8 billion worth of oil has been exported just in the first four months, January through April.
RASCOE: Do we know, like, how much the U.S. is taking or if the U.S. is taking a portion of that money?
VIGIL: We don't have any of that information because the Trump administration hasn't shared it. We would need to know the terms of the agreements that the U.S. government has entered into or has been a party to related to these deals. And just to be clear, my estimate of $8 billion is a floor, meaning that it is likely more, but we just aren't going to have that information until that's provided by the government.
RASCOE: You wrote a piece recently arguing that the oil money could be entrenching a corrupt regime in Venezuela. Can you explain that?
VIGIL: At the heart of the humanitarian, economic and political crisis that we've seen unfold in Venezuela over the last decade, which has caused over 7 million Venezuelans to flee their country - really a destabilizing force in the region - at the heart of that is corruption. So without accountability, without oversight mechanisms, it's hard to imagine a lot of this - these funds that are flowing back to Venezuela not feeding right back into those corrupt structures. And so that's the big concern.
RASCOE: But is there a better way to do this - to let Venezuela make money from its oil reserves, but make sure that it's to help rebuild the country and not supporting a corrupt regime?
VIGIL: Yeah. I mean, if we take a big step back, I don't think the U.S. government should be controlling another foreign sovereign country's resources. But the U.S. government does have a lot of influence in Venezuela right now, more influence than I think the U.S. government has ever had.
How is it using that influence? It is using that influence to get very narrow economic concessions out of the interim president, who is the No. 2 for Nicolás Maduro, who was removed on January 3. Everyone else that was part of that dictatorship is still there, and there's no incentive for them to change the way that they run the country without a push, really, from the U.S. government for them to make the political changes that need to be made, which includes an election and includes steps towards a transition back to democracy. But that is not how the U.S. government is using its influence right now.
RASCOE: And people around the world are facing higher fuel prices and inflation because of the war in Iran. Could Venezuela help fill that gap? Like, does it have the capability to do that?
VIGIL: If you take a step back and look at the global oil picture, what Venezuela is producing, which is just over a million barrels per day, is a very small amount of the global oil demand. So it's about 1%, even though for Venezuela, it is a lot. Like you mentioned earlier, it's a seven-year high. But because it is such a small amount, it's not going to meaningfully change the shortages because of the war in Iran. With that said, most of the oil exports from Venezuela have gone to the United States, to the Gulf refineries, and the second-biggest market is India. India is a big economy, important partner. So it is an important source for those economies and for the economies that can receive Venezuelan crude, but big-picture, it's just still producing a very small amount.
RASCOE: That's Roxanna Vigil, a fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you.
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