How to read OFAC’s latest moves in the post-Maduro landscape.

What Happened—and What Didn’t

Since U.S. special forces captured and extracted Nicolás Maduro on January 3, 2026, the Treasury Department has issued a steady stream of Venezuela-related sanctions licenses. Acting President Delcy Rodríguez has signed a new hydrocarbons law, released political prisoners, and signaled willingness to cooperate with Washington. Against this backdrop, OFAC’s February 10 package—which included GL 30B alongside GL 48 and GL 46A—has fueled speculation that Venezuela’s market is reopening.

What’s the Licenses: A Significant Gap Between Perception and Reality

GL 30B specifically authorizes transactions with INEA—Venezuela’s National Institute of Aquatic Spaces—and entities in which INEA holds a 50 percent or greater interest, for activities “ordinarily incident and necessary to operations or use of ports and airports in Venezuela.” In plain terms, this means ships can dock. Planes can land. Humanitarian goods and authorized cargo can move through Venezuelan infrastructure.

What GL 30B does not authorize is equally important: no transactions with PdVSA outside existing specific licenses, no financial market access for the Venezuelan government, no new debt purchases, no operations benefiting Russian entities, and no broad oil and gas sector activities without separate authorization. The broader sanctions architecture—built through executive orders dating back to 2017—remains in place.

The Licensing Pattern Worth Understanding

To understand what GL 30B signals, you need to see it within Washington’s broader approach to Venezuela sanctions since 2023. The U.S. doesn’t lift sanctions wholesale—it issues calibrated, time-limited or conditional licenses that can be extended, modified, or revoked with minimal notice. This gives Treasury maximum flexibility to respond to behavior on the ground.

The recent pattern tells a story: following the October 2023 Barbados Agreement, OFAC issued GL 43 (gold sector) and GL 44 (oil and gas) as six-month incentives for free and fair elections. When Venezuela’s supreme court upheld a ban on opposition candidate María Corina Machado in January 2024, GL 43 was immediately revoked. When the Maduro government violated the electoral roadmap in April 2024, GL 44 was not renewed—replaced instead with GL 44A providing only 45 days for wind-down operations.

Since then, Washington maintained a specific-license approach: companies like Chevron, Eni, and Repsol operated under individual authorizations that could be pulled at any time. In March 2025, Chevron’s license was itself revoked.

After Maduro’s removal, the licensing tempo accelerated. GL 46, issued January 29, authorized established U.S. entities to engage in Venezuelan oil trade—a significant expansion, but one loaded with conditions including strict payment terms and restrictions on digital payments. GL 47, issued February 3, authorized the sale of U.S.-origin diluents to Venezuela. Then came the February 10 package.

Washington is using licenses as leverage, not liberalization. Each authorization is narrow, conditional, and revocable. The system is designed to reward cooperation and punish backsliding—and the track record shows Treasury will do exactly that.