The Trump administration is preparing to issue a broad Treasury Department license as soon as this week that would allow companies to pump oil in Venezuela, a move aimed at easing U.S. sanctions and jump-starting investment in the country’s decaying energy infrastructure, Bloomberg reported. 

The planned “pumping” license would build on other recent sanctions relief steps. Last week, the U.S. issued a separate general license allowing companies to buy and sell Venezuelan oil, covering downstream activities such as loading crude onto tankers, exporting, transporting and refining it, so long as the work is conducted by “an established U.S. entity,” Bloomberg said.

Before that, the administration granted individual approvals to trading houses Trafigura Group and Vitol Group to restart Venezuelan oil sales after a partial U.S. naval blockade restricted exports and filled storage tanks. With that bottleneck easing, Venezuela’s heavy sour crude has been returning to the global market and shifting toward U.S. refiners rather than Chinese buyers, the news outlet said.

Yet firms without an existing foothold in Venezuela remain wary of political risk, including uncertainty about the durability of the current government, Bloomberg added.  

Read more at Bloomberg