Venezuela says $300-million US oil sale used to prop up currency

Venezuela's interim leader Delcy Rodriguez said Tuesday that her country has received $300 million from a US sale of Venezuelan crude and she will use it to prop up her country's battered currency, the bolivar.

Rodriguez said the sum from a $500 million sale conducted by Washington would be used to "stabilise" the foreign exchange market "to protect the income and purchasing power of our workers."

Washington last weekend said US President Donald Trump brokered a "historic energy deal" that would "benefit the American and Venezuelan people."

Trump said the oil could be sold at market price and that proceeds would be "controlled by me, as President of the United States of America."

Foreign exchange has been vital to the Venezuelan economy since 2018, when the bolivar became virtually worthless and the dollar became the country's de facto currency.

The dollar has since coexisted with the bolivar but a scarcity of greenbacks, caused by a six-year-old US embargo of Venezuelan oil, has caused its value to soar.

By intervening in the currency market, the government aims to gradually reduce the gap between the official dollar rate and the black market rate, the Ecoanalitica firm said.

Before the US capture of longtime leader Nicolas Maduro in a bombing raid on Caracas in January 3, Venezuela had been forced to offer huge discounts on its crude to circumvent the US oil embargo.

The biggest customer for its crude was China.

Washington began clamping down on those sales in December by seizing tankers carrying sanctioned Venezuelan crude.