Venezuela’s June oil exports were largely flat at around 760,000 barrels per day (bpd) as U.S. licenses supported half of month’s shipments to destinations in the U.S. and Europe, according to shipping data and documents.
Washington in April decided not to renew a broad license that had allowed Venezuela to freely export oil since last year. But it since has granted individual licenses to companies willing to do business with the South American country.
A total of 44 tankers departed from Venezuelan waters last month, carrying an average 762,033 bpd of crude and fuel and 350,000 metric tons of oil byproducts and petrochemicals, according to the preliminary data, based on tanker movement.
The numbers were lower than in May, when the country exported 770,260 bpd of crude and fuel and 614,000 tons of byproducts and petrochemicals.
Exports to the U.S. by U.S. oil producer Chevron from joint ventures with state company PDVSA averaged 199,000 bpd, a slight decrease from the 204,420 bpd shipped in May.
Deliveries to European refineries by joint ventures whose participants include Italy’s Eni, Spain’s Repsol and France’s Maurel & Prom rose to 145,000 bpd in June from 113,000 bpd the previous month, the data showed.
Asia was again the prime destination for Venezuela’s oil exports, taking some 330,000 bpd in June.
Venezuela wants to increase oil output to 1.23 million bpd by the end of the year, from 876,000 bpd so far this year. But sustained oil exports over 600,000 bpd this year – higher than in the same period of 2023 – have led to bottlenecks at the country’s oil infrastructure, while slowly draining crude inventories available, internal PDVSA documents showed.
PDVSA is slowly returning to use of dark-fleet tankers to carry a large portion of exports to Asia and Cuba as those shipments are not covered by U.S. licenses and its own fleet dwindles, according to the data and vessel monitoring services.
In June, Venezuela’s exports to Cuba averaged 33,700 bpd, in line with May numbers.
The OPEC country also imported some 55,000 bpd of diluents and motor fuels last month, below the 78,000 bpd of May, the data showed.
(Reporting by Marianna Parraga in Houston and Mircely Guanipa in Maracay, Venezuela; Editing by David Gregorio)