The volume of Venezuelan oil in tankers at sea has jumped to over 29 million barrels following the U.S. blitz to extract Nicolas Maduro out of Venezuela, up from 20 million barrels held at sea at the start of this week, Bloomberg reported on Friday, quoting vessel-monitoring data by Kpler.
The U.S. captured Maduro in a weekend operation by U.S. forces and flew him to New York to face drug-trafficking charges. The Trump Administration strong-armed the authorities in Venezuela to give the United States “total access” to its oil resources.
The United States is keeping what it calls an oil quarantine on Venezuela, maintaining the blockade offshore the country holding the world’s biggest proven oil reserves. U.S. forces also continue to chase and seize sanctioned tankers.
In one of the latest instances, U.S. forces this week seized a Russia-flagged tanker in the North Atlantic after a dramatic pursuit that began near Venezuelan waters, marking a sharp escalation in Washington’s enforcement of its global blockade on sanctioned Venezuelan oil.
The operation concluded a weeks-long chase that began in late December when the tanker abruptly turned away from Venezuela and headed into the open Atlantic to evade the U.S. quarantine.
The blockade and the intensified pressure on Venezuela’s shadow exports have resulted in amassed Venezuelan oil volumes at sea. The increase of nearly 10 million barrels over the past week has been mostly evident in Asian waters, according to Kpler’s data.
China has been a key buyer of Venezuelan crude in recent years.
Chinese oil buyers have reduced their intake of Venezuelan oil as the discount between Brent and the country’s flagship Merey crude shrank from $15 per barrel last month to $13 per barrel now, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed sources.
Although the U.S. has signaled it wouldn’t be cutting off China from Venezuelan oil, independent Chinese refiners are aware that their supply could shrink significantly.
“Chinese teapots are already bracing for the possibility that the barrels now in transit will be their last,” Muyu Xu, a senior crude analyst at Kpler, told Bloomberg.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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