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(Bloomberg) -- Chevron Corp. filed tax returns worth about $300 million with the Venezuelan government last year, raising questions about how much President Nicolás Maduro is benefiting from the US company’s oil production in spite of sanctions.
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Chevron filed documents saying its ventures in Venezuela owed 8.1 billion bolivars to Seniat, Venezuela’s tax agency, in March 2024 under its registered name in the country, Chevron Global Technology Services Company, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg News. The company is the sole authorized payer for those ventures. It’s unclear if, or how, Chevron paid those taxes.
“Chevron conducts its business in Venezuela in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations,” spokesman Bill Turenne said Thursday by email.
Any form of payment to Venezuela’s government would appear to violate the sanctions waiver Chevron was granted by the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. General License 41 prohibits the US driller from paying taxes, royalties or dividends of any kind to Petroleos de Venezuela SA or any other state controlled entity. It also forbids it from selling oil outside of the US or from expanding its operations.
In the submissions to Seniat, Chevron’s Petropiar venture filed the bolivar equivalent of about $217 million in income tax in 2023, while its Petroboscan venture filed for $83 million, using an average rate of 27 bolivars per dollar. The US driller has two other ventures with PDVSA and holds a minority stake in all four. Venezuela’s hydrocarbons law also compels companies to pay a third of their production in royalties, as well as other taxes.
Chevron’s relationship with Venezuela is likely to come under intense scrutiny by President-elect Donald Trump, who is expected to take a harder line against the Maduro regime than Joe Biden’s administration. The outgoing president eased restrictions on Chevron’s oil production in 2022 after Maduro renewed talks with the opposition over holding democratic elections. The US was in the midst of decades-high inflation at the time, driven in part by high oil prices.
“Companies like Chevron are actually providing billions of dollars of money into the regime’s coffers, and the regime kept none of the promises that they made,” Secretary of State-nominee Marco Rubio said Wednesday at his Senate confirmation hearing. “All that needs to be re-explored.”