May Joe Biden lift some of Venezuela´s sanctions?

The country with the largest proven oil reserves in the world, at a whopping 299,953,000,000 barrels of oil, is currently suffering from such a severe fuel shortage that it is viewed by many around the world as a humanitarian crisis. Despite its incredible wealth of resources, Venezuela continues to suffer from an extreme economic crisis with no end in sight. Thanks in large part to severe international economic sanctions, the South American nation has few options and friends. The Trump administration has cracked down on trade with Venezuela to drive the despotic head of state Nicolas Maduro from power. After years of cutting off almost every conceivable source of income for the country - which was once the richest on the continent - Maduro remains in power and the most hard-pressed victims of the sanctions are not those in his cabinet but the Venezuelan citizens themselves. Venezuela currently relies heavily on Iran to keep its transportation system, agricultural infrastructure, and generators running, and while some international oil shipments have managed to bypass US sanctions, the flow of fuel in and out of Venezuela has increased slowed down to a small trickle. With no market for their crude oil, the country's last oil rig left the country in August, and in September Bloomberg reported that the country is ripping apart its now-useless pipelines to sell as scrap in a desperate strategy to make some money scrape together. Now that the Trump era, which cracked down on Venezuela, draws to a close, many see the change in administration as an opportunity for Venezuela to start over. "Representatives of Venezuela's fuel suppliers, Venezuelan oil importers and stakeholders said this month they plan to push the in-depth administration of US President-elect Joe Biden to reverse a ban on crude oil on diesel swaps," Reuters reported Week.