On August 27, 2026, the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued amended versions of eight Venezuela-related General Licenses and refreshed the related FAQ set. The batch replaces prior iterations of licenses covering Venezuelan-origin oil and petrochemicals, US-origin diluents, oil and gas operations of certain entities, Venezuelan-origin minerals including gold, Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA) transactions, minerals-sector supply, general item and service supply to Venezuela, and telecommunications-related supply. For sanctions teams that already rely on these authorizations, the operative text changed the same day: every mapped activity must be re-checked against the new lettered versions before the next trade, payment, or shipment clears.
General licenses are permissive carve-outs under 31 CFR Chapter V, not new prohibitions. There is no phased entry into force. The amended texts apply on issuance. The compliance task is immediate re-baselining of playbooks, screening logic, and counterparty files that still cite the superseded GL letters.
What changed across the eight amended Venezuela general licenses?
OFAC replaced the prior Venezuela GL iterations with GL 46D (Venezuelan-origin oil or petrochemical products), GL 47B (sale of US-origin diluents to Venezuela), GL 48C (supply of certain items and services to Venezuela), GL 50C (oil or gas sector operations in Venezuela of certain entities), GL 51C (Venezuelan-origin minerals, including gold), GL 52B (certain transactions involving PDVSA), GL 54B (supply of certain items and services for minerals operations in Venezuela), and GL 61A (telecommunications-related supply to Venezuela). The new letter suffix marks a superseding instrument: reliance on the prior letter is no longer a safe harbor once the amendment is out.
| Amended license | Scope (title as issued) | Sector focus |
|---|---|---|
| GL 46D | Certain activities involving Venezuelan-origin oil or petrochemical products | Oil and petrochemicals |
| GL 47B | Sale of US-origin diluents to Venezuela | Oil (diluents) |
| GL 48C | Supply of certain items and services to Venezuela | General supply |
| GL 50C | Oil or gas sector operations in Venezuela of certain entities | Oil and gas operations |
| GL 51C | Certain activities involving Venezuelan-origin minerals, including gold | Minerals and gold |
| GL 52B | Certain transactions involving PDVSA | PDVSA |
| GL 54B | Supply of certain items and services for minerals operations in Venezuela | Minerals operations supply |
| GL 61A | Supply of certain items and services to Venezuela related to telecommunications | Telecommunications |
GL 61A is the first amendment to the telecommunications supply license OFAC issued only six days earlier, on August 21, 2026. Teams that just onboarded GL 61 must treat GL 61A as the controlling text. Oil, trading, mining, and bank desks that built procedures around the prior 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, and 54 letters face the same letter-change risk across energy and minerals.
Who must re-baseline, and by when?
The exposed audience is concrete: sanctions and trade-compliance officers at energy majors, oil and petrochemical traders, mining and gold-trading houses, telecom suppliers, and financial institutions that clear Venezuela-related payments under these GLs, including US persons and any non-US firm whose Venezuela flow touches the US financial system. Counterparties commonly in scope include operators relying on oil and gas authorizations (for example Chevron, TotalEnergies, Eni, Repsol and their banks) and any desk still booking PDVSA-linked or Venezuelan-origin minerals transactions under the prior GL letters.
The deadline is operational, not calendar-based: before the next authorized activity settles. Update internal Venezuela sanctions matrices so every mapped activity points to the new letter; re-read the operative conditions, authorized parties, and any carve-out limits in each PDF; and freeze deal or payment templates that still cite the superseded versions.
How should teams treat the new and amended FAQs?
Alongside the licenses, OFAC issued new Venezuela FAQs 1267 and 1268, amended FAQs 1233 and 1244, and archived FAQ 1260. FAQs are sub-regulatory guidance: they do not create hard-law obligations on their own, but OFAC staff and examiners treat them as the agency's reading of the licenses. Archiving FAQ 1260 means any procedure or opinion memo that still quotes it must be retired the same day.
Read the new and amended FAQs against the corresponding GL texts, not in isolation. Confirm whether your desk's fact pattern still matches the agency's examples; escalate any gap where the amended FAQ narrows a previously comfortable reading; and document the cross-walk in the compliance file. The 50 Percent Rule remains fully in force: a general license authorizes a transaction type, it does not clear a counterparty that is blocked by aggregate ownership. OFAC civil liability is strict; a defensible record shows the transaction was structured under the current lettered GL, with current SDN and 50 Percent screening.
Subscribe to the free newsletter
Verify which of the eight amended licenses your desk actually relies on, replace every stale letter citation in procedures and templates, re-screen Venezuela counterparties under the 50 Percent Rule, and brief energy, minerals, telecom, and trade-finance stakeholders on what remains authorized. Obsidian's continuous, per-jurisdiction real-time monitoring surfaces this kind of OFAC batch the moment it publishes, so the next Venezuela license amendment does not land as a surprise.
