By CAITLIN OPRYSKO
POLITICO
06/02/2021
Reliance Industries, an Indian conglomerate and oil refiner, has retained a former Senate aide to President Joe Biden, Ankit Desai of ABI Associates. Desai will work as a subcontractor to Eversheds Sutherland, which Reliance has retained since 2019, and will lobby the administration to relax restrictions on companies receiving Venezeulan crude oil in exchange for diesel fuel, according to a disclosure filing.
— Bloomberg News reported in January that officials from Reliance and oil giant Chevron were set to meet with State Department officials not long after Biden was sworn in, in an attempt to get the new administration to let up on restrictions on Venezuelan oil put in place during the Trump administration, though apparently those discussions weren’t fruitful.
— “Reliance is basing its request to resume oil swaps on the argument that the operations do not provide cash to the Venezuelan government but rather help lessen the humanitarian crisis there,” Bloomberg’s Lucia Kassai wrote at the time. “Diesel is used in power generation, public transportation, agriculture and to deliver food and medicine.”
— Desai worked for Biden in the Senate in 2005, before working as a fundraiser for now-Sen. Mark Warner’s (D-Va.) PAC and then heading to the private sector. He’s the first new lobbyist for Reliance since it hired Eversheds Sutherland’s Virginia Faulk and Jacob Dweck after not actively lobbying in Washington for the better part of a decade, according to lobbying disclosures.
— The timing coincided with new sanctions on the state-run Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., handed down by the Trump administration as part of a renewed push to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from office by choking off oil revenues. According to Bloomberg, “while some companies were still allowed to engage in limited dealings with the South American country,” crude-for-diesel swaps “were nixed last October.”
— Bloomberg News reported in January that officials from Reliance and oil giant Chevron were set to meet with State Department officials not long after Biden was sworn in, in an attempt to get the new administration to let up on restrictions on Venezuelan oil put in place during the Trump administration, though apparently those discussions weren’t fruitful.
— “Reliance is basing its request to resume oil swaps on the argument that the operations do not provide cash to the Venezuelan government but rather help lessen the humanitarian crisis there,” Bloomberg’s Lucia Kassai wrote at the time. “Diesel is used in power generation, public transportation, agriculture and to deliver food and medicine.”
— Desai worked for Biden in the Senate in 2005, before working as a fundraiser for now-Sen. Mark Warner’s (D-Va.) PAC and then heading to the private sector. He’s the first new lobbyist for Reliance since it hired Eversheds Sutherland’s Virginia Faulk and Jacob Dweck after not actively lobbying in Washington for the better part of a decade, according to lobbying disclosures.
— The timing coincided with new sanctions on the state-run Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., handed down by the Trump administration as part of a renewed push to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from office by choking off oil revenues. According to Bloomberg, “while some companies were still allowed to engage in limited dealings with the South American country,” crude-for-diesel swaps “were nixed last October.”
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