France wants to explore talks on lifting sanctions on oil-producing nations Iran and Venezuela to ease global energy prices, a French presidency official told Reuters on Monday.
“There are resources elsewhere that need to be explored,” the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Germany.
The US and Iran are returning to indirect negotiations that will now be held in Doha, Qatar, instead of Vienna. Negotiations stalled over the US refusal to lift the terror designation of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). But Tehran has now dropped its demand to have the designation lifted.
“So there is a knot that needs to be untied if applicable … to get Iranian oil back on the market,” the French official said. “We have Venezuelan oil that also needs to come back to the market.”
The Biden administration recently eased some minor sanctions on Venezuela, but there is still a long way to go until the country’s oil can return to the global market. The South American country has been under heavy US sanctions since 2019, when the US backed a coup attempt against President Nicolas Maduro by supporting Juan Guaido, who the US still recognizes as Venezuela’s leader despite the reality in Caracas.
French President Emmanuel Macron was heard on the sidelines of the G7 summit telling President Biden that Saudi Arabia and the UAE can barely increase oil output, signaling he wants to explore other options. Biden is expected to push the Saudis to increase oil output during a visit to the country next month, although the visit will likely be more focused on boosting Israeli-Arab cooperation against Iran.
When Trump backed the claim that a man who hadn’t even run for President was somehow the legitimate leader of Venezuela, I realized that elections don’t matter to the US State Department. It boggles the mind that the US continues to recognize Guaido as the leader of Venezuela even though 83% of Venezuelans believe that he is incapable of running the country.
When the turbine broke on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, gas flows were reduced to 40% of normal. Blaming Russia, Germany, which is upstream from France, seized large portions of the gas allocated to France. That was a wake-up call.
The recent National Assembly election was another wake-up call. Macron has seen the light. Now we see how much concern Biden actually has for the welfare of the French people.
He doesn’t even care about US citizens.
How nice to steal Venezuelan gold as the UK has, destroy Iran in every way and Venezuela too (for twenty years) then expect them to provide you with anything you have lost by your own stupidity???
If sanctions removed it would be interesting if Iran and Venezuela snub France for oil sale…!
Allowing Venezuelan and Iranian oil on to the global market would help alleviate to a degree some supply & pricing problems.
I doubt the US is savvy enough to appreciate this.
Macron for all his many faults seems to be one of the few European leaders with
with a modicum of common sense.