Venezuela announces it will use oil revenues sold to the United States to support national currency

Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, announced Tuesday that her country has received $300 million from a deal to sell crude oil to the United States, noting she will use it to prop up the national currency, the bolivar, which is in a state of deterioration.

Rodríguez, who succeeded Nicolás Maduro after the US military arrested him on January 3rd, said the first tranche received from a $500 million sale by Washington would be invested to stabilize the foreign exchange market to protect workers’ income and purchasing power.

Washington announced last weekend that US President Donald Trump had brokered a historic energy deal that would benefit the American and Venezuelan peoples.

Foreign exchange has become a vital component of the Venezuelan economy since 2018, when the bolivar became virtually worthless and the US dollar took its place in Venezuelan transactions.

Since then, the dollar has coexisted with the bolivar, but the scarcity of the dollar in the formal banking sector due to the six-year US embargo on Venezuelan oil has led to a massive rise in its value on the black market.

Rodriguez confirmed on Friday that new foreign currency would be injected, saying: “These currencies will reach private banks and are intended for the foreign exchange market mechanism… We must ensure effective currency management”.

Through its intervention in the currency market, the Venezuelan government aims to gradually reduce the official exchange rate with the black-market rate.

Before the arrest of Maduro, who ruled the country for a long time, Venezuela was forced to offer huge discounts on its crude oil to circumvent US sanctions, and China was its biggest buyer.

In December, Washington began cracking down on these sales by seizing sanctioned Venezuelan crude oil tankers.