US retreats on Venezuela oil talks after Maduro meeting criticism

US retreats on Venezuela oil talks after Maduro meeting criticism

The Biden administration saw the Ukraine crisis as an opportunity to re-engage with Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian regime in Venezuela, hoping to secure alternative oil supplies and prise away a key Moscow ally.

But after news leaked of a secret mission to Caracas by three top White House officials, sparking a furious political backlash, the administration backtracked.

The White House this month sent three top officials to talk to Maduro, even though the US does not recognise him as president and has indicted him as a drug trafficker with a $15mn price on his head. The US government acknowledged last week that one aim was “certainly” to discuss energy security following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The visit — the first by a White House official to Caracas since the 1990s — prompted a fierce backlash at home, not only from Republican hawks like Florida senator Marco Rubio but also Bob Menendez, the Democrat head of the Senate foreign relations committee.

Rubio accused President Joe Biden of trying to replace “the oil we buy from one murderous dictator [Russian leader Vladimir Putin] with oil from another murderous dictator [Maduro].”

Menendez said “the democratic aspirations of the Venezuelan people . . . are worth much more than a few thousand barrels