Trump Admin Allows Western Firms to Participate in Venezuela Mining

The Trump administration March 27 opened Venezuela’s mining to Western companies, lifting some sanctions that kept outside investors from buying and selling the country’s gold and other minerals.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued three general licenses to authorize dealings with Venezuelan minerals.

The first—G51A—allows U.S. entities to purchase, transport, and sell Venezuelan-origin minerals, including gold, but doesn’t permit extraction or refining activities.

The second permit—GL54—allows U.S. entities to provide goods, technology, software, or services connected to mining in Venezuela.

And the third, GL55, grants permission to corporations to engage with the Venezuelan state entities to negotiate contracts, but requires them to apply for a license before the contracts are enacted.

The Trump administration’s lifting of restrictions comes three weeks after U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced gold worth $100 million had been transported from Venezuela to the United States as part of a commercial agreement.

Venezuela’s government has given security assurances to foreign mining companies interested in investing in the country’s rich resources, Burgum said. The mines have long been controlled by guerrilla members, gangs, and other illegal groups.

The United States imposed heavy sanctions on Venezuela’s gold sector starting in 2018, targeting former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro’s regime and the state mining firm Minerven. The sanctions blocked the assets and prohibited transactions of the Maduro government.

The new licenses will allow transactions with Minerven entities in some instances.

Payments to any sanctioned governments, or sanctioned individuals, are still prohibited. Any transaction involving the Russian Federation, the Islamic Republic of Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and China, or any entity controlled by those regimes, is not allowed.

The Trump administration will also allow companies to begin seeking out properties in Venezuela.

Roland Mineral Enterprises Corp., a Canadian exploration company, announced March 27 that it had started an acquisition program to seek out and acquire interests in Venezuelan mineral properties, including mining rights to known gold, silver, and copper deposits.

“We are in a unique and opportune moment in Venezuelan mining history,” said Frank Garofalo, Roland’s vice president of business development. “We believe Venezuela’s very recent opening to mining and investment, coupled with our immediate access to a wealth of data and people, make Roland’s Venezuelan Mineral Rights Acquisition Program especially well-timed and favorable.”

The company considers the Las Cristinas Gold project mine in Bolivar State in southeastern Venezuela, opened in 1997 by Placer Dome Inc., one of the largest undeveloped gold deposits in the world.

Roland has signed an agreement for an exclusive use of the mine’s current owner’s assets to study the site.

The mine is in the Orinoco Mining Arc, a deadly mining region known to be ruled by gang lords and armed groups. The region has reported a spike in attacks in recent years by the National Liberation Army, a leftist Colombian guerrilla group.