F L O R I D A H O U S E O F R E P R E S E N T A T I V E S
HM 467 2024
1 House Memorial
2 A memorial to urge the United States Secretary of
3 State to implement policies at the United States
4 Department of State that reinstate economic sanctions
5 on Nicolás Maduro and his Venezuelan dictatorship and
6 impose sanctions on companies that do business with
7 Venezuela.
8
9 WHEREAS, beginning in 2008, the United States imposed
10 sanctions on the Venezuelan regime as Hugo Chávez began
11 expropriating oil assets of companies including Exxon Mobil and,
12 in 2017, the Trump administration placed economic sanctions on
13 the Venezuelan dictatorship, targeting the state-owned oil and
14 natural gas company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), and
15 WHEREAS, on January 28, 2019, the United States Department
16 of the Treasury, pursuant to Emergency Order 13850, designated
17 PDVSA as operating in the oil sector of the Venezuelan economy,
18 and the Secretary of the Treasury determined that the company
19 was subject to United States sanctions that included the
20 freezing of all property and interests subject to the United
21 States' jurisdiction, whose value was estimated at $7 billion,
22 and prohibited individuals and companies in the United States
23 from doing business with PDVSA, including exporting naphtha, and
24 WHEREAS, in February 2019, Nicolás Maduro ordered PDVSA to
25 move its European office to Moscow to protect the company's
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26 overseas assets from United States sanctions, and
27 WHEREAS, on February 18, 2020, the Office of Foreign Assets
28 Control of the United States Department of the Treasury
29 designated Rosneft Oil Company's Swiss-incorporated company,
30 Rosneft Trading S.A., as operating in the oil sector of
31 Venezuela for brokering the sale and transport of Venezuelan
32 crude oil and supporting Nicolás Maduro's regime, and
33 WHEREAS, continuing through 2021, the United States has
34 sanctioned Venezuela's Central Bank, National Development Bank,
35 and Minerven, the state-owned gold company, as well as
36 individuals that assisted PDVSA in evading sanctions, and
37 WHEREAS, the Biden administration has eased sanctions on
38 companies that trade in oil produced in Venezuela or invest in
39 the country's oil industry in response to Venezuela's agreement
40 to allow free elections in 2024, and
41 WHEREAS, this misguided change in policy lessened the
42 impact of longstanding sanctions aimed at promoting freedom and
43 democracy in Venezuela and could increase the flow of Venezuelan
44 oil into the global crude market, but is not expected to help
45 lower the prices that have remained stubbornly high amid turmoil
46 in Europe and the Middle East, and
47 WHEREAS, on October 18, 2023, the sanctions on the export
48 of crude oil and refined petroleum were lifted for a period of 6
49 months, and Minerven is authorized to conduct transactions that,
50 unfortunately, will provide revenue to the Maduro regime which
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51 it can use to stay in power and spread terror and corruption
52 around the globe, and
53 WHEREAS, decades of corruption and mismanagement at PDVSA
54 have resulted in a rusted drilling infrastructure that is
55 pumping less than a third of the 3 million barrels a day that
56 Venezuela produced during its peak production in the early
57 2000s, and
58 WHEREAS, on October 30, 2023, the Maduro-aligned Venezuelan
59 Supreme Court suspended the opposition's entire primary
60 elections process, including the election results, and ordered
61 organizers to hand over documents identifying millions of voters
62 after the opposition's primary election garnered more support
63 than expected, leading many in the United States Congress to
64 support the reinstatement of sanctions on the Venezuelan
65 dictatorship, NOW, THEREFORE,
66
67 Be It Resolved by the Legislature of the State of Florida:
68
69 That the United States Secretary of State is urged to
70 implement policies at the United States Department of State that
71 reinstate economic sanctions on Nicolás Maduro and his
72 Venezuelan dictatorship and impose sanctions on companies that
73 do business with Venezuela.
74 BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Secretary of State dispatch
75 copies of this memorial to the President of the United S tates,
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76 the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the
77 United States House of Representatives, the United States
78 Secretary of State, and each member of the Florida delegation to
79 the United States Congress.
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