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This is the second amendment in successive weeks to OFAC's Venezuela minerals-relief license stack. On August 27, 2026, OFAC replaced GL 51B (June 10, 2026) with GL 51C and GL 54A with GL 54B — both confirmed by direct read of the primary-source PDFs to cover only Minerven and "minerals, including gold," with no coal or Carbozulia language. Five days later, on September 2, 2026, OFAC issued a further round — GL 51D (superseding 51C), GL 54C (superseding 54B), and new GL 55A — that adds "coal" to each license's scope and adds Carbozulia, a Venezuelan state-owned coal company, as a named counterparty alongside Minerven. GL 55A is new: it authorizes negotiating and entering contingent contracts for coal-or-minerals investment (bids on public tenders, MOUs, agreements in principle) but expressly bars executing any resulting deal without separate, specific OFAC authorization — a controlled on-ramp for prospective investment rather than a green light to close transactions.
Both the underlying license text and reporting converge on the same conditions carried over from the predecessor licenses: contract disputes must be resolved in the US, UK, France or Singapore; blocked-person payments must route through the Foreign Government Deposit Funds created under Executive Order 14373 (January 9, 2026); and the licenses continue to exclude any transaction touching Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba or China, or the processing/refining of the relevant minerals in those jurisdictions.
general-license perimeter, widening the pool of established-U.S.-entity counterparties who can lawfully trade with Venezuela's state mining sector without a specific license.
Venezuelan SOEs into the relief perimeter beyond Minerven, worth watching for further sector-specific SOE additions.
minerals investment paperwork now while OFAC retains a case-by-case veto on actual execution — a slower, more controlled liberalisation track than an unconditional general license.
not independently confirmed against the primary PDF (only the August 27 predecessor PDFs for 51C/54B were read directly); revisit if the full license text becomes available.
license or removal) tracks separately from this general-license expansion.