Technically the U.S. still considers Juan Guaidó the President of Venezuela, despite the fact that he never even ran for the office of President, nor holds an elected office of any kind, and only has a 15% approval rating.
That had to make things rather awkward when the Biden Administration sent officials to Caracas this past weekend.

Senior American officials are in Venezuela this weekend to meet with the government of Nicolás Maduro, whose authoritarian rule of the oil-producing country has meant no formal diplomatic relations between the two countries since 2019.

The visit is yet another example of a geopolitical shift underway across the globe in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine as the U.S. and European countries seek energy sources other than Russia, one of the world's largest oil exporters.

The trip has three objectives:

a) to help replace Russian oil from the markets, if an embargo of Russian oil actually happens. There are several problems with this. For instance, Venezuela is completely unable to produce more than a fraction of what Russia produces. Another issue is that it is unlikely that countries like China and India would participate in an embargo of Russian oil.

b) to weaken Russia's influence in the Western Hemisphere. Russia only has a couple strong allies in this hemisphere, and Venezuela is one of them. This is a more achievable objective.

c) to restart the regime change agenda in Venezuela, which has completely stalled in the last couple years. Except this time by using diplomacy, which hard-liners like Senator Rubio unanimously oppose.

"Joe Biden using #Russia as an excuse to do the deal they always wanted to do anyway with the #MaduroRegime," Rubio tweeted Sunday morning. "Rather than produce more American oil he wants to replace the oil we buy from one murderous dictator with oil from another murderous dictator."

To give you an idea of the conflicting agenda of Washington, last weekend the Biden Administration decided to renew executive order 13962. This order makes it official policy that it considers Venezuela a threat to its national security and foreign policy.
Talk about awkward. As you might imagine, the talks didn't start out well.

In the talks, Washington sought guarantees of free presidential elections, broad reforms of Venezuela's oil industry to facilitate production and exports by foreign firms and the government's public condemnation of the Ukraine invasion, which Maduro has defended, three people familiar with the matter said.

As a concession, the U.S. officials were willing to consider temporarily allowing Venezuela to use the SWIFT system, which facilitates financial transactions between banks worldwide, to move money to other accounts, one of the sources said.

Maduro sought a total lifting of sanctions prohibiting Venezuela's oil exports, the removal of sanctions on him and other Venezuelan officials and the return to the state's control of PDVSA's U.S. subsidiary Citgo Petroleum, sources said.

Easing oil sanctions could start by allowing companies including U.S. Chevron Corp (CVX.N), India's ONGC (ONGC.NS) and Europeans Eni , Repsol (REP.MC) and Maurel & Prom (MAUP.PA) to trade cargoes of Venezuelan oil. Those firms have made separate requests to Biden's administration, but no decisions have been made.

The only truly promising news was this single sentence.

Aides to Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido were only notified about the meeting on Saturday morning.

The Guaido fiction is coming to an end, even in Washington.

In a related note, Biden is also asking Saudi Arabia to increase oil production.