On March 6, 2026, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) continued its trend of selectively easing the Venezuela sanctions by (1) issuing General License No. 51 (“GL 51”), the first general license (“GL”) beyond the energy sector, and (2) publishing six new Frequently Asked Questions (“FAQs”) addressing the scope of several of the previously issued energy-related GLs. In parallel, Venezuela has begun reforming its mining sector. Background Since late…
This week, the US relaxation of sanctions against Venezuela’s oil and gas sector entered a new phase with the publication of a general license authorizing a broad range of upstream oil and gas activities. The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) has been busy with Venezuela-related actions over the past few weeks. We previously blogged about general licenses authorizing oil trading and downstream activities (blog post here) and the…
On December 18, 2025, President Trump signed into law the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (“NDAA”) that contains in Title LXXXV a revised version of the previously introduced Comprehensive Outbound Investment National Security Act (“COINS Act”). The COINS Act codifies and expands the existing Outbound Investment Security Program (“OISP”) that restricts US outbound investment in certain sensitive technologies. The NDAA passed Congress with significant support reflecting bipartisan consensus to implement an outbound investment…