By David Alire Garcia
(Reuters) -The U.S. is closely studying imposing new sanctions on individuals in Venezuela and possibly revoking licenses for oil companies operating there, a senior U.S. official said on Friday, in response to what she called a fraudulent election result.
Brian Nichols, the top U.S. diplomat for Latin America, made the comments during a webcast briefing with reporters two months after Venezuela’s hotly contested July 28 presidential election.
“The use of individual sanctions or the revocation of permits associated with sectoral sanctions is something that we are studying very closely,” Nichols said, after being asked about the possibility of imposing new visa restrictions on individuals and ending existing oil production . licenses.
OPEC member Venezuela is one of Latin America’s top oil-producing countries, but crude oil production has fallen sharply during Maduro’s decade-plus in power, largely due to underinvestment and five years of U.S. sanctions on the industry . The country’s oil production has increased slightly in recent years.
After the election, some in the Venezuelan opposition have called for U.S. officials to change or revoke oil permits that generate revenue for Maduro’s government.
Nichols, the US assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, stressed that Washington will work with “our friends and allies” as they pursue a democratic transition in Venezuela.
Election officials and the country’s highest court declared Socialist President Nicolas Maduro the winner of the election with 52% of the vote. But authorities, many of whom have close ties to Maduro’s ruling party, have failed to release vote tallies at the ballot box level, even though they have repeatedly said they would and are legally obliged to do so.
Venezuelan officials have said a computer hack prevented them from making the figures public.
However, just days after the election, the country’s opposition uploaded to a website scanned copies of thousands of voting machine receipts obtained by their observers that they say show a landslide victory for their candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez.
Earlier this month, Gonzalez fled to Spain, where he was granted political asylum.
The United States, like most governments in America and the European Union, has not recognized Maduro as the winner of the July 28 elections.
“The United States and our partner countries continue to refuse to accept Maduro’s claim of victory without evidence,” Nichols said, adding that the US government is instead vouching for “the publicly available evidence” showing Gonzalez won.
He emphasized that Caracas has not kept its promises.
“They have repeatedly said they would provide information. They never did that to prove any element of their claim that Maduro won. Obviously he didn’t do that,” Nichols said.
The diplomat also called for the release of those “arbitrarily” detained in the aftermath of the elections and an end to political violence against the opposition.
