The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) stated on Tuesday that expanded U.S. authorizations for transactions related to Venezuela are expected to allow the country's oil production to recover to pre-blockade levels by mid-2026. The U.S. maritime blockade, implemented last December, severed Venezuela's oil export capacity, leading to a buildup of millions of barrels of crude in onshore storage tanks and vessels. Before the blockade, Venezuela's average daily crude output was approximately 1.1 to 1.2 million barrels.

Following the U.S. government's authorization last month for commodity traders Vitol and Trafigura to join Chevron in exporting Venezuelan oil, helping to alleviate inventory backlogs, state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA) has reversed most of its prior production cuts, raising output to nearly 1 million barrels per day. The EIA indicated that these traders store a significant portion of the oil at Caribbean terminals, from where it is likely shipped to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. At the end of last month, the U.S. also issued an expanded general license permitting additional companies to transport and sell Venezuelan oil. The EIA noted that this measure should help mitigate production shutdowns caused by the blockade and enable output to return to pre-blockade levels by the end of the second quarter of this year.