Only now the money from exporting oil to the US is stopping, or more precisely, given to Guaidó instead of Maduro. There were no "sanctions" of that sort before 2019. In all the years of Chavez and Maduro, Venezuelan oil has kept going to the United States. The couple of American companies that left back then (over disagreements on conditions changed by Chavez) did not mean the oil stopped flowing. It was all sent by the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA to the other Venezuelan state oil company CITGO in the US.
Self evidently not true, you obviously know alot of the details, yet you're avoiding the fact that Venezuela was prevented from using USD now for several years (hence Maduro's eventual introduction of the Petro state cryptocurrency in 2017). It's a big barrier to selling oil exports if you cannot transact in the currency in which it's priced.
Lies, i have told countless times in this forum, and yet you people repeat the same falsehood again. We were never stopped from using USD by anyone but the regime itself. Quite the irony at that. Petro wasn't introduced to bypass US sanctions against Venezuela, it was possibly introduced to bypass US sanctions against corrupt and criminal individuals from Venezuela, who are suddenly finding their ill gotten money frozen. But more likely, to cover the horrid policy of creating fiat money from nowhere and blaming it all on the "Evil Empire".
Let me repeat this to you in case you don't get it. Up until 2019, yes THIS YEAR, Oil (Petroleum) from Venezuela has been going into the USA (to CITGO), and sold there for USD. That money then enters PDVSA (the Venezuelan State Oil company) and "by law" is all given to the Central Bank of Venezuela, where the regime "assigns it" to a few select elite at "preferential price" and spends the rest only God knows how (because they suspended accountability, by declaring the National Assembly invalid when they lost most of their seats there). We know SOME of it is used to buy food at outrageous prices from other countries to sell subsidized here. You can rest assured some elite, either good friend, family or military close to the regime gets to keep the profits from importing that.
And just you wait until you learn about the money making scheme the "foreign currency exchange control" does to them... I might hold to explain that with more detail in a separate thread. When the American asic manufacturer butterfly labs went bankrupt, why was a Venezuelan willing to buy the whole thing and sell it back at price? Because of this...
Venezuela has two separate USD prices: One "legal" the select few Elite can obtain, and one "illegal" everyone can buy at 3x or more. Of course, those who obtain the legal price, proceed to illegally sell it (directly or indirectly by buy/sell things) in the parallel (black) market.
So in "socialist" Venezuela, you get to make lots of money if you happen to be real friends with someone with the decision to assign things to you, just like it always has been in all socialist countries. At the expense of the misery, disease and starvation of the masses, of course.
So by having the right connections, you can convert 1,000 USD to 3,000 USD, 3,000 USD to 9,000 USD, 9,000 USD to 27,000 USD...
But wait, that is not even the most lucrative business...
100 USD fills a gasoline tanker truck. Make that tanker "somehow" cross the border, and it becomes 40,000 USD. Are the military involved? Yup. Does this occur by sea on ship tankers too? Yup. Socialism is a machine for corruption, and those are the only people getting sanctioned, not Venezuela.
Something similar has been occurring with the subsidized food too, on a smaller (but sometimes even more lucrative) scale. And well, since everything is technically illegal anyway, and you are bribing all over the place, some bonus drug-trafficking goes on too. That is how Maduro's nephews using a plane belonging to State Oil PDVSA, ended arrested in Haiti with a LOT of cocaine they intended to bring to the USA.
When you see a rich Maduro official (diplomat or whatever) getting his/her assets frozen abroad, do no feel the least sympathy for them, and do not think the sanctions are against the country, they are not, that is a blatant lie. The sanctions are against specific individuals, with full name, not "anyone from Venezuela".