On January 3, 2026, U.S. forces entered Caracas and captured Nicolás Maduro — the sitting president of Venezuela — along with his wife, Cilia Flores. Both were transported to New York, arraigned in Manhattan federal court on January 5, and charged with narco-terrorism and drug trafficking. Maduro told Judge Alvin Hellerstein: "I am innocent. I am not guilty. I am a man, the president of my country." He called himself a "prisoner of war," according to CBS News' reporting on the arraignment. Both pleaded not guilty. Within hours of the operation, Venezuela's high court declared Maduro's absence "temporary" and ordered his deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, to take office for up to 90 days. On April 1, 2026 — the Treasury announcement was made on Wednesday — the U.S. lifted its personal sanctions against Rodríguez. The 90-day period expires this Friday.
Who Is Delcy Rodríguez — and Why Was She Sanctioned?
Delcy Eloína Rodríguez Gómez was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in September 2018, during Trump's first term. The Treasury's designation at the time stated that Maduro had given Rodríguez and her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, "senior positions within the Venezuelan government to help him maintain power and solidify his authoritarian rule," according to The Guardian's reporting on the April 2 lifting of those sanctions. Jorge Rodríguez is now president of Venezuela's National Assembly — the legislative body that also controls her tenure extension.
Before her captivity-era elevation, Delcy Rodríguez had served as Venezuela's Foreign Minister and then as Executive Vice President under Maduro — effectively his number two. She was a loyalist of the Chavista movement, not a reformer or opposition figure. Her rise to acting president following Maduro's capture was a product of Venezuela's constitutional succession order, not any American preference for reform.
The current Trump administration made a deliberate choice: rather than support Venezuela's political opposition — which had long been backed by the U.S. under multiple administrations — it chose to work with Rodríguez to reopen Venezuela's oil sector. The Guardian reported that she has "since led Venezuela's cooperation with the US administration's phased plan to turn the country around, pitching her oil-rich nation to international investors and opening up the country to private capital, international arbitration and scrutiny."
The Oil Calculus: PDVSA Sanctions Lifted in March
The April 2 personal sanctions relief for Rodríguez is the latest step in a rapid normalization that began the day Maduro was taken. The key earlier milestone came on March 18, 2026, when the U.S. Treasury issued a general license broadly authorizing U.S. companies to do business with Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA) — Venezuela's state-run oil company, which had been under U.S. sanctions since 2019.
Reuters, which broke the March 18 story, described it as "a bold step called for by interim President Delcy Rodriguez to reactivate the company's core operations and boost sales after a strict U.S. oil blockade knocked down crude output and exports." A U.S. Treasury spokesperson was quoted in Reuters' reporting: "This license will benefit both the United States and Venezuela, while supporting the global energy market by increasing the supply of available oil. It will also help incentivize new investment in Venezuela's energy sector."
The license was not a complete removal of all PDVSA sanctions — those imposed since 2019 remain partially in force, according to PBS NewsHour's reporting. But its practical effect was sweeping: companies that existed before January 29, 2025 could now buy Venezuelan oil and engage in transactions previously prohibited. The license also requires that any contract with PDVSA include dispute resolution in the U.S., and that payments flow through U.S. Treasury-controlled accounts.
The explicit context for both the PDVSA license and Rodríguez's personal sanctions relief is the Iran war. Reuters described the Treasury action as "part of an attempt by the Trump administration to alleviate pressure on oil markets caused by the war with Iran." With the Strait of Hormuz disrupted and global oil prices surging more than 50% since late February, Venezuelan oil represents one of the few near-term sources of increased supply available to Western markets.
The Production Reality: ~900,000 Barrels a Day, and a Broken Infrastructure
Venezuela has the world's largest proven oil reserves, according to OPEC estimates. At its peak in the late 1990s, Venezuela produced over 3 million barrels per day. Under Maduro, a combination of mismanagement, U.S. sanctions, and infrastructure decay collapsed production to under 400,000 barrels per day by the early 2020s.
Under the partial sanctions relief that preceded the March 18 general license — specifically, waivers granted to Chevron in 2022 — Venezuelan output began recovering. Reuters reported, based on ship tracking data, that March 2026 exports are forecast to reach pre-blockade levels of approximately 900,000 barrels per day. Venezuela is currently producing approximately 1 million barrels per day of crude, according to a Reuters report in February citing a statement made by a U.S. official during a trip to Caracas.
But analysts are blunt about the ceiling. Brett Erickson, a managing principal at Obsidian Risk Advisors, told Reuters: "The reality is, Venezuela doesn't have the infrastructure, it's not like it has the ability to just start ramping up output of oil." Any production increase beyond current levels, Erickson and other analysts told Reuters, will require infrastructure repairs, oil and gas project expansions, and new supply agreements — all of which are in negotiation but not yet signed or funded.
Chevron, Vitol, and Trafigura have been the primary partners operating in Venezuela under the existing waiver framework. The March 18 general license opens the field to a much broader range of U.S. and international companies, and Reuters reported that deals previously in negotiation with PDVSA "can now be signed" — but the physical transformation of Venezuela's deteriorated oil infrastructure is a multi-year project, not a wartime fix.
The Political Timeline: What Happens on Friday
Venezuela's high court ordered Rodríguez to take office for up to 90 days following Maduro's capture. That 90-day period expires Friday, April 4, 2026. It can be extended to six months if approved by the National Assembly, according to NBC News, The Guardian, and the LA Times — all citing the same court order. The National Assembly is controlled by the ruling party and presided over by her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, making an extension effectively certain.
The legal complexity runs deeper. Maduro is legally still Venezuela's president, according to The Guardian — his capture does not legally remove him from office under Venezuelan law. He is held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, awaiting trial on federal narco-terrorism and drug trafficking charges. A 25-page indictment, as described by NPR, accused Maduro and others of "working with drug cartels and members of the military to facilitate the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S." He and Flores are also accused of ordering kidnappings and beatings, per NPR's reporting.
In late March, the U.S. recognized Rodríguez as the "sole head of state" of Venezuela in an ongoing civil case in U.S. federal court, according to The Guardian. That recognition, combined with the April 2 sanctions relief, cements her operational legitimacy in Washington's eyes even as the legal status of her tenure under Venezuelan law remains technically provisional.
The Opposition: Bypassed
The Venezuelan political opposition — which fought for years to remove Maduro and was long backed by Washington — has been largely sidelined in the current arrangement. The U.S. chose to work with Rodríguez rather than opposition figures when structuring the post-Maduro transition.
This is a significant departure from decades of U.S. Venezuela policy. From the early 2000s through the Biden administration, Washington consistently backed opposition movements, recognized Juan Guaidó as "interim president" from 2019 to 2023, and designed sanctions specifically to pressure Maduro and protect opposition interests. The current approach prioritizes oil market access and pragmatic deal-making with Maduro's former inner circle over democratic transition or opposition empowerment.
The political prisoner release and amnesty bill that has been part of the post-capture negotiations — per the Wikipedia entry on the 2026 U.S. intervention — represents one concession to democratic norms. Whether elections follow, and on what timeline, has not been publicly specified in available reporting reviewed for this article.
Why It Matters
The Venezuela operation and its aftermath represent one of the most consequential foreign policy actions of the Trump second term — and it has received far less attention than the Iran war happening simultaneously. The U.S. physically captured a sitting head of state, installed his sanctioned deputy in his place, and within three months authorized the country's nationalized oil company to sell directly to American markets. All of this happened while the administration was simultaneously waging a war in the Persian Gulf over oil supply.
The near-term oil impact is real but limited. Venezuela's ~900,000 barrels per day of current exports are already flowing. Getting to 1.5 or 2 million barrels per day — the kind of volume that could meaningfully offset Hormuz disruptions — requires investment and infrastructure work measured in years, not weeks. As one analyst told Reuters: "Will not help global oil impact from Iran war."
What the Venezuela pivot does accomplish is longer-term strategic repositioning: locking in U.S. companies as the dominant players in Venezuela's oil sector, establishing U.S. legal jurisdiction over PDVSA contracts and proceeds, and removing China and Russia as the primary beneficiaries of Venezuelan oil exports — all without a single congressional vote.
The 90-day clock runs out Friday. The National Assembly will almost certainly extend Rodríguez's mandate. The question that no one is asking publicly: what happens when the man who says he's still president is eventually tried, convicted, or released?