Oil&GasAnon here, Venezuela is pretty much being kept afloat with cash from U.S. oil refiners - one of the few places that Venezuela actually receives cash from.
Details in attached PDF. Summary below:
Country Analysis Executive Summary: Venezuela
Last Updated: January 7, 2019
Overview
• Reduced capital expenditures by state-owned oil and natural gas company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PdVSA) are resulting in foreign partners continuing to cut activities in the oil sector, making crude oil production losses increasingly widespread. With Venezuela’s heavy dependency on the oil industry, the country’s economy will likely continue to shrink, and that the runaway inflation will remain the mainstay at least in the short term.
• Venezuela’s revenue from oil exports is severely constricted because only about half of the exports generate cash revenues. U.S. refiners are among the few customers that still remit cash payments. The remaining crude oil exports are sold domestically at a loss or sent as loan repayments to China and Russia (the repayments to Russia are sent to Nayara Energy’s (formerly Essar) Vadinar refinery in India to service debt that Venezuela owes to Russian oil company Rosneft, the co-owner of the Vadinar refinery).