Three licences, three different transactions

The Office of Foreign Assets Control issued three amended Venezuela-related general licences on 2 September. General Licence 51D authorises certain activities involving Venezuelan-origin coal or minerals, including gold. General Licence 54C authorises the supply of certain items and services for coal or minerals operations in Venezuela. General Licence 55A authorises the negotiation of and entry into contingent contracts for certain investment in those sectors. The same notice amended Venezuela-related Frequently Asked Question 1247.[1]

Read down the three, the order is a commodity, then the items and services that let the commodity be produced, then a contract whose effect depends on a condition. A general licence matters because it lets a transaction proceed without a separate application to Washington: the shipment of Venezuelan gold no longer needs a case-by-case answer, and neither does the drilling rig or the assay service sold to the mine. The contracts that General Licence 55A covers are, by their own description, contingent, which leaves the money at the negotiating stage rather than in the ground.[1]

OFAC's notice carries a second line as well. It reminded US persons holding blocked property as of 30 June 2026 to file the Annual Report of Blocked Property by 30 September, and warned that missing that date may lead to an enforcement referral. One line counts what stays frozen and the other names what may move, and both are administered from the same desk.[1]

The oil leg is announced somewhere else

At a ceremony overseen by US Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Chevron valued at $7 billion its agreement to develop two more Orinoco Belt oilfields and Eni obtained exclusive exploration rights to Junin 5. That is oil, announced by companies at a podium. The coal, minerals and gold that OFAC authorised on 2 September appear in a licensing notice instead, which reads as an opening advancing commodity by commodity rather than in a single instrument.[1], [2]

The scale claimed for the oil leg is already public. Venezuela's output stands at 1.25 million barrels a day and the government projects 2 million barrels a day by the end of the decade, inside an arrangement granting US-led entities 100-year concessions over 17 oilfields, roughly a fifth of the country's reserves. Interim President Delcy Rodríguez said the country expects to earn $209 billion over 25 years. Those are figures a state offers about a future; a licence number and a filing deadline are the part an administration signs today.[2]

The next authorisation is the signal

On 2 September this column held that a G20 communique changes nothing at a customs desk until a tariff schedule is published. OFAC's notice sits at the other end of that test: the instrument exists, numbered and dated, and it names the transactions it covers. The narrower question now is whether the contingent contracts under General Licence 55A are followed by an authorisation for the investment itself before the end of 2026.[1], [3]

Until that appears, the ledger OFAC has published reads plainly. Coal, minerals and gold may move under General Licence 51D and General Licence 54C, and the money that would open a mine sits behind a contract that stays contingent under General Licence 55A. The distance between those two lines is where this opening is priced.[1]