Every rule that shapes investment in Venezuela, from the official record.
US Treasury licences, Venezuelan laws and decrees, and where the money goes, versioned, charted and linked to the official documents. Every figure is sourced and every correction is published. Starting with oil.
Sectors
Verified transparency on Venezuela's oil: who controls it and how it flows, from field to terminal to buyer, with the rules and every change.
Independent, source-linked data on control, flows and rules in Venezuela's oil sector. Every figure links to its source document; official records first, press reports labelled until officially confirmed. Official government or company document Reported wire press, pending official confirmation Derived calculated by the project, method shown
Recent changes in control and rules
Datasets
Every map, chart and table published by the project, by theme. Each links to its source documents.
Field-to-buyer summary
Sellers and destinations are separate published totals; the sources do not say which seller's barrels went where.
Every flow dataset: exports by month, buyers, customs data, shipping, diluent →
Production and drilling activity by company
Disclosed output by company
Drilling and field services
Field control map
Each field is coloured by the type of company partnering with PDVSA. Click a field for owners and its profile. Positions approximate; NABEP circles show the areas named in sources, not exact fields. Base map © OpenStreetMap contributors · OpenMapTiles · OpenFreeMap.
Exports by destination
Monthly exports from Venezuela by destination, thousand barrels per day. Pick a month; routes start at the Jose terminal, which handles most exports.
Route width shows kb/d. Click a route or destination for the figure and its source. Base map © OpenStreetMap contributors · OpenMapTiles · OpenFreeMap.
Exports by destination, 2026
The hatched part is volume whose destination was not reported. Circles mark OPEC's production estimate; squares mark Venezuela's own figure (both from OPEC's monthly report). Click a month to show it on the map.
Crude production
Two measures, both published in OPEC's Monthly Oil Market Report: OPEC's estimate from secondary sources, and the figure Venezuela reports to OPEC directly ("direct communication").
| Month | OPEC estimate | Venezuela's figure | Difference* | Report |
|---|
US imports of Venezuelan crude
Monthly, thousand barrels per day, as published by the EIA.
US weekly imports
EIA weekly preliminary imports, thousand barrels per day.
US importers and ports of entry
Crude oil imported from Venezuela by importing company, thousand barrels per day, by month.
Imports reported by buyer countries
Monthly imports of crude oil (HS 2709) with Venezuela as origin, as reported by each importing country. Volumes converted to kb/d at 6.5 barrels per tonne; price is customs value per barrel. China does not report Venezuela as an origin, so its purchases do not appear here.
Spain's imports of Venezuelan crude
EU imports of Venezuelan crude by country
Monthly crude imports (HS 2709) from Venezuela reported by EU member states. Usually a month fresher than UN Comtrade for EU buyers.
US exports to Venezuela (crude and products, incl. diluent)
Crude oil and petroleum products shipped from the US to Venezuela, thousand barrels per day (EIA series MTTEXVE2). Reuters reports PDVSA typically imports about 100,000 b/d of naphtha and light crude to dilute its extra-heavy crude; OFAC GL 47B authorizes sales of US-origin diluents.
India imports and early US buyer snapshot
Logistics chain
Each stage of the chain with the companies publicly named as doing the work, and what the sources show.
Reported cargoes
| Date | Vessel | Class · flag | Seller / charterer | Cargo | Route |
|---|
Voyages named in the sources cited on each row.
Sanctioned tankers linked to Venezuela
Vessels on the US Treasury's Specially Designated Nationals list under Venezuela-related programs, refreshed daily. Use the IMO number to look up current owner and position.
Control of Venezuela's oil fields
Which companies hold stakes in which fields, what kind of companies they are, and what changed. Every stake and label links to its source.
Stakes by company
North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP)
The largest change in control since 2007: a privately held company, partly owned by the US government, takes concessions over 17 fields. Where official sources and press reports differ, both are shown.
| Item | What the source says | Status | Source |
|---|
Fields named so far
| Field / project | Area | Before the deal | Status | Source |
|---|
Company and field directory
One profile per company and per field: stakes, operator, company type, changes and sources.
Companies
Fields and joint ventures
Field ownership register
Joint ventures, production-sharing contracts and state-run assets. Click a row to see it on the map.
| Asset | Area | Ownership | Operator | Status |
|---|
Company disclosures
Each company's own reported Venezuelan volumes and plans. Companies report on different bases (gross vs net, oil vs oil-equivalent), so compare with care.
| Company | Disclosed volume | Period | Trend and plans | Sources |
|---|
Licence register: oil, PDVSA and CITGO
US sanctions on PDVSA remain in place; oil trade runs through OFAC general licences, which are amended often. For each licence: who it covers, what it allows, its conditions, what it excludes, its expiry, what changed in the latest version and every earlier version, each linked to the official text.
Versions issued in 2026
Oil money: where payments for Venezuelan oil go
Under US rules, royalties and taxes owed to Venezuela's state and PDVSA on licensed oil sales are paid into US Treasury accounts, not to Venezuela directly. What the documents say, the amounts officials have stated, and what has not been published.
Amounts stated by officials
| Date | Amount | Statement |
|---|
Not published
Timeline
Every fact on the money, with its source
Latest changes
| Date | Action |
|---|
Venezuela's 2026 legal and fiscal framework
The January 2026 reform of the Organic Hydrocarbons Law and the July 2026 regulations that set royalties, taxes and contract types.
| Date | Rule | What it says | Sources |
|---|
Every Venezuela general license
The full list as currently posted by OFAC. Oil, gas and PDVSA-related licenses are highlighted.
Change log
Every dated change in control, rules and flows, newest first. Reported items are upgraded to official when a government or company document appears.
Briefs: dated events in Venezuela's oil sector
One page per scheduled or official event: the documents, the facts they state and the record behind them. Updated when the event happens.
About the Venezuela Rulebook
The Venezuela Rulebook tracks every rule that shapes investment in Venezuela, from the official record: US Treasury licences, Venezuelan laws and decrees, and where the money goes, versioned and linked to the official documents. It starts with oil: who controls each field, how the oil flows from field to terminal to buyer, the rules that govern it, and every change.
What the project does
It collates official documents (governments, regulators, OPEC, the US Energy Information Administration, company filings and releases) and reports from wire services, and presents them as maps, charts, tables and dated briefs. It does not publish estimates or opinions of its own. Every figure links to its source document; figures the project calculates, such as unit conversions or changes on the month, are labelled and show their method.
It is written for investors, analysts, traders, compliance teams, journalists and researchers who need to check a fact quickly and cite where it came from.
Independence
The project is independently owned and is published under the project's name.
Editorial standards
- Official first. Government documents, regulators, OPEC, EIA and companies' own filings are labelled Official. Reuters, Bloomberg, AP, AFP, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, Argus and S&P Global are labelled Reported until an official document confirms them. Wikipedia, wikis, blogs, newsletters and aggregators are never cited.
- One source minimum, always visible. No figure, field, company stake or event appears without at least one source; an automatic check blocks any publication that breaks this rule.
- Checked before publication. Headline figures and changes in control are checked against the source document before they are published, and each check is recorded.
- Disagreements shown, not resolved. When sources disagree (for example OPEC's estimate and Venezuela's own production figure), both are shown side by side.
- Dated and current. Every dataset shows the period it covers and when it was collected. Official datasets (EIA, OPEC, OFAC, US Census, Eurostat, Spain's CORES, UN Comtrade) are collected automatically every day; reported items are reviewed for official confirmation.
- Gaps stay gaps. Where information is not public, the project says so instead of estimating it.
Corrections
Errors are corrected as soon as they are found, and every correction to published data or text is listed here with its date. Routine data updates (a new month, a revised figure from the publisher) are not corrections and appear in the change log.
Privacy
The site sets no cookies, has no accounts and runs no advertising trackers. Visits are counted with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which is cookieless and reports only aggregate figures (pages, countries, referring sites). Fonts (Google Fonts), chart and map code (cdnjs) and base-map tiles (OpenFreeMap) are loaded from third-party servers, which receive the visitor's IP address as part of any web request.
Email updates. If you sign up, your email address is stored in the project's own Cloudflare account with the date and the page you signed up from, only to send you Rulebook updates. It is never sold or shared. To stop automated abuse, sign-up attempts are counted per hour under a one-way scrambled code of the network address; the address itself is not stored and the count expires after an hour. If the project later sends through a newsletter service, the list moves there and this page will name it. To unsubscribe or have your address deleted, write to [email protected].
Contact and corrections requests
Sourcing methodology
Labels
Official A government document (Gaceta Oficial, ministries, White House, State Department, Treasury/OFAC, EIA, OPEC, customs agencies) or a company's own filing or press release.
Reported Wire press (Reuters, Bloomberg and similar), shown until an official document confirms it. When sources disagree, all versions are shown side by side.
Derived Calculated by the project from published figures (for example tonnes to barrels, or shares of a total); the method is stated next to the number.
The project does not estimate, forecast or give opinions.
How the project is run
The Venezuela Rulebook is run by dedicated AI agents, each with one job: collecting official data, scanning news and filings, tracking expected reporting dates and checking that published figures are current, verifying that every figure carries a source, reviewing security, and building the site.
Automated checks run before anything is published: every record must cite a source, official records are preferred, press reports stay labelled until an official document confirms them, and calculated figures state their method. The project's owner sets direction and reviews a weekly brief of everything the agents changed.
Every change is dated in the change log, and every figure links to the document it comes from, so any statement can be checked independently.
Disclaimer
The Venezuela Rulebook collates and displays publicly available information for reference only. It is not investment, legal, tax or trading advice, and nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security or commodity, or to enter into any transaction. Figures are shown as published by their sources, which may revise, contradict or withdraw them; the project does not verify them independently and makes no warranty as to accuracy, completeness or timeliness. "Reported" items are press reports not yet confirmed by an official document. Nothing here is a statement on the legality of any transaction under US, Venezuelan or other sanctions or laws; check the primary documents and take professional advice before acting.
Sources
Every source cited on the site, with its label.