U.S. refiners will not be able to complete transactions for shipments of crude from Venezuela’s PDVSA for cargoes they had contracted before the U.S. Treasury slapped sweeping sanctions on the Venezuelan state oil firm, Bloomberg reports , quoting people familiar with the matter. Last Monday, the U.S. imposed sanctions on PDVSA to “help prevent further diverting of Venezuela’s assets by Maduro and preserve these assets for the people of Venezuela. The path to sanctions relief for PdVSA is through the expeditious transfer of control to the Interim President or a subsequent, democratically elected government,” Secretary of the Treasury Steven T. Mnuchin said. The sanctions block all payments to PDVSA accounts, and buyers of Venezuelan crude are directed to deposit payments in a separate account, to which PDVSA doesn’t have access. U.S. refiners have asked the Treasury for clarification regarding payments for already contracted shipments, and officials have told some […]