By Georgina McCartney, Arathy Somasekhar and Marianna Parraga
HOUSTON, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Several European partners of Venezuela's state-run oil company PDVSA, including Spain's Repsol and France's Maurel
& Prom, have applied for U.S. licenses or authorizations to export oil from the OPEC country, five industry sources told Reuters.
The requested terms are similar to those granted by Washington in past years, which allowed the companies to receive and export Venezuelan oil for their refineries and other customers, while supplying fuel to Venezuela through a debt-recovery mechanism, two of the sources said.
The companies have not been able to export Venezuelan oil since the second quarter of last year, after the administration of President Donald Trump suspended the licenses. Repsol participated in a meeting last week at the White House, where Trump asked a group of oil companies to invest in Venezuela.
Repsol declined to comment. Maurel & Prom did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
When asked about Venezuelan license requests, a U.S. Treasury spokesperson last week said the department would not comment on specific authorizations, but Washington has said it plans to ease sanctions on Venezuela, imposed since 2019, following its capture of President Nicolas Maduro.
PDVSA's European partners are involved in multiple projects in Venezuela and might need individual authorizations for each one. Some requests had been submitted months ago, while others were re-submitted in recent days, the sources said.
U.S. oil companies, foreign refiners and global trading houses have also recently applied for Venezuela licenses, all of them related to the OPEC country's oil supplies, sources said. The petitions follow a first group of two authorizations granted last week to traders Vitol and Trafigura, which allowed the first $500 million in oil sales, a government official said on Wednesday.
Caracas and Washington this month agreed to a 50-million-barrel crude supply deal, the first step of Trump's ambitious $100 billion plan to reconstruct Venezuela's dilapidated oil industry.
Chevron is expected to receive an expanded license from the U.S. government this week that could allow for increased production and exports from the South American country, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
U.S.-based Valero Energy, India's Reliance and traders Mercuria and Glencore have also been in talks for licenses from Washington to do business with Venezuela, industry sources said. Marathon Petroleum confirmed in an email to Reuters that it was also in talks for a license.
(Reporting by Georgina McCartney, Arathy Somasekhar, Marianna Parraga, Jarrett Renshaw and Pietro Lombardi. Additional reporting by Francesca Landini and America Hernandez. Editing by Nathan Crooks and Mark Potter)
