Venezuelan methanol: OFAC names it when it was already 23% of US imports

We set the three licenses OFAC issued on September 28 next to their previous versions, line by line. The text that authorizes and the text that prohibits are identical down to the commas. The only change is in the annex, between the calcium phosphates and the urea: four new lines reading "methanol," and a fifth at the end of the list.

Those five lines arrive at a business that already existed. We added up US purchases month by month from January to July: Venezuelan methanol was 22.7% of the value of all the methanol the United States imported, third among its suppliers, behind Trinidad and Tobago and Canada.

The license, then, does not open that market.

It lets in the party that until now had to be kept out, the Venezuelan state, owner of just over a third of the plant that produces the most, and it lets it in toward a single destination, which also happens to pay the least per tonne.

A trade that never stopped

The series of US purchases tells the story on its own. From 2015 to 2018 the United States imported between $125 million and $203 million of Venezuelan methanol a year. In 2019, the year of the oil sanctions, the figure fell to $43 million, and in 2020 no purchases were recorded. They came back in 2021 and have since ranged between $48 million and $84 million a year. In the first seven months of 2026 they already total $47 million, almost as much as in all of 2025.

This year Venezuela also gained ground. It went from 15% of import value in 2025 to 22.7%, while Trinidad and Tobago, the traditional supplier, fell from 56% to 38%; Canada took the rest. The strongest month was April, at $13 million.

That the trade continued under sanctions has to do with who owns the plants. Metor, which can produce 1.6 million tonnes a year, is 37.5% owned by Pequiven, the state petrochemical company, and almost all the rest by two Japanese companies. Of Supermetanol, the other plant in Jose, a third belongs to Ecofuel, an Eni subsidiary.

In neither does the state hold a majority.

In April 2020, US officials said sanctions did not directly target methanol exports, and one of them warned that, because of the state shareholding, parties to the trade were sanctionable. Pequiven, for its part, received no dividends. Mitsubishi resumed sales to the United States in 2021, the year the purchase series reappears.

What the annex adds

Until September 28, methanol did not fit in the general oil license. An OFAC FAQ published in February expressly excludes it from petroleum products, and the petrochemicals annex, built for fertilizers and their inputs, did not name it. Since that annex says the products "include" those listed, there is no record that it was prohibited before.

What ends is the doubt, and with it the sanctionable label for whoever buys.

The license lets any US entity organized by January 29, 2025 deal in Venezuelan petrochemical products bound for the United States, even when the Venezuelan government, PDVSA or its subsidiaries sit on the other side of the table. Since that date that includes methanol: an importer can now deal with Pequiven or with the state port authority, provided its contract sends disputes to one of four forums (Singapore, France, the United Kingdom or the United States) and whatever it pays a sanctioned person goes into the deposit funds the Treasury administers. For Pequiven, that means going from not collecting to being able to collect in an account it does not control.

The destination that pays least

The license covers only what goes to the United States, and the United States is only the fourth-largest buyer of Venezuelan methanol. The countries reporting purchases in 2025 paid a total of $534 million, and China took almost four times as many tonnes as the United States.

The last column is landed prices, with freight and insurance included, and it has to be read that way. Even with that caveat, the United States pays the least: $215 a tonne in 2025, against $273 for China, which carries a much longer voyage, and more than $330 for the European buyers and Brazil. From January to July this year the landed price rose to about $242, still below the $299 paid for Trinidad and Tobago's methanol.

If the methanol the state takes part in goes more to the United States because of the license, it will be to sell it where it fetches least.

What sets the volume

How much methanol leaves Jose is decided by gas, not by OFAC. Buyers reported almost 1.8 million tonnes in 2025, a little more than Metor can produce on its own, and in February an industry report recorded both plants running at reduced rates, with gas curtailments as the common cause.

A license can change where that methanol goes, but it does not add a single tonne.

Trade statistics for August to October will show whether anything moves. If Venezuela's share of US purchases rises above its January-to-July level, the license is diverting volume; if it stays there, it put in writing a business that already existed. The other thing that would change this reading is a sale with Pequiven on the selling side.

Meanwhile, what OFAC wrote on September 28 fits in five lines: permission for the Venezuelan state to collect, in an account it does not control, for something the United States was already buying.