LatinNews Regional Monitor: Caribbean & Central America - 12 February 2020

* Nicaragua’s 92-member unicameral national legislature, which is controlled by the ruling Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), has approved a bill proposed by President Daniel Ortega which creates four new state companies to handle the importation, storage, distribution and sale of oil and gas. The four companies are: the national hydrocarbons exploration and exploitation company (Enih); the Nicaraguan gas company (Enigas); the Nicaraguan company of hydrocarbons storage and distribution plants (Eniplanh) and the Nicaraguan company for the importation, transport and commercialisation of fuel (Enicom). In December 2019 the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac) sanctioned Distribuidor Nicaraguense de Petroleo SA (DNP), a chain of petrol stations owned by the Ortega family which was nationalised days later. The US’s move was in line with efforts to pressure the Ortega government to end its crackdown on political opponents which began in April 2018. Albanisa, a joint venture between the bi-national oil company owned by the state-owned oil companies of Venezuela and Nicaragua (Pdvsa and Petronic respectively) was affected by US sanctions applied to Pdvsa last year).

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