CARACAS: CARACAS: Venezuela’s state-run oil company PDVSA is telling customers of its oil joint ventures to deposit sales proceeds at an account it recently opened at Russia’s Gazprombank AO, according to sources and an internal document seen by Reuters on Saturday.
PDVSA’s move follows tough, new US financial sanctions imposed on Jan. 28 and aimed at blocking leftist President Nicolas Maduro’s access to the country’s oil revenue. The United States and dozens of other nations have refused to recognize Maduro, characterizing his election last year to another six-year term as fraudulent.
Since then, PDVSA has been pressing its foreign partners at joint ventures in its Orinoco Belt producing area to formally decide whether they will continue in the projects, according to two sources with knowledge of the talks. The joint ventures’ partners include Norway’s Equinor ASA, US-based Chevron Corp. and France’s Total SA.
PDVSA also ordered its Petrocedeno joint venture with Equinor and Total to halt extra-heavy oil output and upgrading due to a lack of naphtha needed to dilute production, as sanctions prohibited US suppliers of the fuel from exporting it to Venezuela.
“We would like to make formal your knowledge of new banking instructions to make payments in US dollars or euros,” said PDVSA’s finance vice president, Fernando De Quintal, in a letter dated Feb. 8 to the PDVSA unit that supervises its joint ventures.
Even after a first round of financial sanctions in 2017, PDVSA’s joint ventures managed to keep bank accounts in the United States and Europe to receive oil-sales proceeds. They also used correspondent banks in the United States and some European nations to move money to PDVSA’s own collecting accounts in China.
PDVSA several weeks ago informed customers of the new bank directions and has begun moving the accounts of its joint ventures, which can export crude separately. The decision was made amid tension with some of its partners, which have withdrawn staff from Caracas since sanctions were imposed.
Venezuela shifts oil ventures’ accounts to Russia’s Gazprombank — document, sources
Venezuela shifts oil ventures’ accounts to Russia’s Gazprombank — document, sources
- The joint ventures foreign partners include Norway’s Equinor ASA, US-based Chevron Corp. and France’s Total SA
Top Australian writers’ festival canceled after Palestinian author barred
- 180 authors boycotted the event and its director resigned after a Palestinian author was disinvited
SYDNEY: One of Australia’s top writers’ festivals was canceled on Tuesday, after 180 authors boycotted the event and its director resigned saying she could not be party to silencing a Palestinian author and warned moves to ban protests and slogans after the Bondi Beach mass shooting threatened free speech.
Louise Adler, the Jewish daughter of Holocaust survivors, said on Tuesday she was quitting her role at the Adelaide Writers’ Week in February, following a decision by the festival’s board to disinvite a Palestinian-Australian author.
The novelist and academic Randa Abdel-Fattah said the move to bar her was “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Tuesday announced a national day of mourning would be held on January 22 to remember the 15 people killed in last month’s shooting at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach.
Police say the alleged gunmen were inspired by the Islamic State militant group, and the incident sparked nationwide calls to tackle antisemitism, and prompted state and federal government moves to tighten hate speech laws.
The Adelaide Festival board said on Tuesday its decision last week to disinvite Abdel-Fattah, on the grounds it would not be culturally sensitive for her to appear at the literary event “so soon after Bondi,” was made “out of respect for a community experiencing the pain from a devastating event.”
“Instead, this decision has created more division and for that we express our sincere apologies,” the board said in a statement.
The event would not go ahead and remaining board members will step down, it added.
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, British author Zadie Smith, Australian author Kathy Lette, Pulitzer Prize-winning American Percival Everett and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis are among the authors who said they would no longer appear at the festival in South Australia state, Australian media reported.
The festival board on Tuesday apologized to Abdel-Fattah for “how the decision was represented.”
“This is not about identity or dissent but rather a continuing rapid shift in the national discourse around the breadth of freedom of expression in our nation following Australia’s worst terror attack in history,” it added.
Abdel-Fattah wrote on social media that she did not accept the apology, saying she had nothing to do with the Bondi attack, “nor did any Palestinian.”
Adler earlier wrote in The Guardian that the board’s decision to disinvite Abdel-Fattah “weakens freedom of speech and is the harbinger of a less free nation, where lobbying and political pressure determine who gets to speak and who doesn’t.”
The South Australian state government has appointed a new festival board.
