The arrest of Nicolas Maduro threatens Russia with loss of influence in the oil market - intelligence
Kyiv • UNN
The arrest of Nicolas Maduro and potential US control over Venezuela's oil assets would deal a financial and geopolitical blow to Russia. This could undermine its position in Latin America and threaten budget stability, as well as lead to the loss of control over Venezuelan oil assets.
The arrest of Nicolas Maduro and the potential establishment of US control over Venezuela's oil assets represent a massive financial and geopolitical blow to Russia, undermining its position in Latin America and threatening its budgetary stability. Russian experts admit that Moscow risks losing not only assets but also its ability to influence global oil prices. This was stated by the Foreign Intelligence Service, as reported by UNN.
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According to intelligence, the concentration of more than half of the world's oil reserves under American control will allow Washington to keep the price of Russian oil at around $50 per barrel – a critical threshold for the Russian budget.
Additional pressure is created by problems with Venezuelan debts. Between 2006 and 2017, the Kremlin provided the Venezuelan government and the state oil company "Petroleos de Venezuela S.A." (PDVSA) with $17 billion in loans; as of 2017, Caracas's debt to Moscow was $3.5 billion with deferred payments until 2027 – the return of these funds is becoming increasingly unlikely. Russia is also effectively losing control over Venezuelan oil assets. The stakes received by "Rosneft" in the late 2010s, after US sanctions against PDVSA, were transferred to "Roszarubezhneft," but effective management of them under sanctions and political pressure seems unrealistic
Collectively, the likely reformatting of the Venezuelan oil sector under US control deprives Moscow of one of its few energy strongholds outside Eurasia. This indicates the structural vulnerability of the Russian economy and its critical dependence on external control over oil prices, the intelligence service concluded.