Early on, the U.S. government warned Maduro it would not renew licenses that eased oil sanctions on PDVSA, the Venezuelan state oil company, if he violated the Barbados accord. The relief from sanctions has provided the regime with as much as $3 billion in fresh revenue, according to oil experts from the Venezuelan opposition. Maduro has also taken advantage of the relief to negotiate deals with foreign oil companies in an attempt to boost the country’s output.

Yet the administration has been telegraphing it is considering other options. Under one proposal on the table reported by the Washington Post, the Treasury Department would impose a new sanctions regime allowing Venezuela to continue to sell crude to international customers but in the country’s currency, the bolívar, not hard currencies.

The Maduro regime doesn’t merit “any kind of extension” of the general license granted in October that temporarily allowed transactions involving the Venezuelan oil and gas sectors, said Ryan Berg, director of the Americas Program and head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“It’s very clear that they’ve violated almost every single point in the Barbados agreement and what little credibility we have remaining would be completely destroyed if we simply extended that license without any consequences for Maduro,” he said.

Venezuelan observers told the Herald that the three-and-a-half years of the Biden administration’s policies have gained little for the U.S. or the Venezuelan opposition.

“What have we gotten from all of this? Well, I think the facts on the ground speak for themselves; I don’t think Maduro has moved an inch toward free and fair elections,” Farnsworth said.

Some experts argue that Maduro has, in fact, outplayed the administration by gaining concessions and giving up little in return. The administration was able to secure the release of a number of U.S. citizens it deemed had been arrested unjustly in Venezuela in exchange for the release of two of Maduro’s nephews serving a lengthy sentence in New York for drug trafficking and the release of Alex Saab, a key business partner of the ruler who faced money-laundering charges in Miami.

Otherwise, the Venezuelan regime has actually gone backwards in almost all of the other terms it agreed to, increasing the number of people detained as political prisoners and taking steps to fabricate an artificial election victory in July, analysts say.

“Nicolas Maduro has achieved his top priorities: the return of the narco-nephews, the oil licenses, and getting Alex Saab back in Venezuela,” said Eddy Acevedo, a senior advisor at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “Maduro will not let Maria Corina Machado [run] and this farce of an election will not be free and fair, so sanctions that Maduro fears and knows will actually bite must be imposed. If not, the US risks losing credibility.”

A State Department spokesperson told the Herald the United States “remains committed to supporting the will of the people and their desire for democratic governance in Venezuela.”

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