International Business: Russian oil firm shuffles Venezuela assets as sanctions bite – Gulf Digital News

International Business: Russian oil firm shuffles Venezuela assets as sanctions bite – Gulf Digital News

A Russian oil company used to provide a workaround to US oil trading sanctions on Venezuela is scrabbling to avoid another set of sanctions, documents show, this time from Europe and the United States over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Russia is one of Venezuela's few allies on the international stage. Russian companies have helped state-run oil firm PDVSA sustain output in recent years despite U.S. sanctions intended to deprive President Nicolas Maduro's government of its main source of export income.

Roszarubezhneft was incorporated in 2020 and soon afterwards acquired the Venezuelan holdings of Russian state-run oil giant Rosneft as Washington imposed sanctions on two of Rosneft's units for trading Venezuelan oil.

The five joint ventures Roszarubezhneft acquired produce some 125,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude in Venezuela and employ some 200 Russian and local workers, according to sources and analysts. That is equivalent to about 16% of the 788,000 bpd that Venezuela produced last month.

Roszarubezhneft is attempting to transfer ownership of its Venezuelan assets from its European units to another company in Russia to avoid "the blocking of the activities or the confiscation of assets of companies of the group," said one of several company documents reviewed by Reuters.

Transferring the ownership