The volume of Venezuelan oil exported under a flagship $2 billion supply deal with the U.S. reached about 7.8 million barrels on Wednesday, vessel-tracking data and PDVSA documents showed, highlighting slow progress that has prevented the state oil company from fully reversing recent output cuts.
Caracas and Washington earlier this month agreed a deal, following the U.S. capture of President Nicolas Maduro, to sell up to 50 million barrels of Venezuelan crude stored in tanks and aboard vessels. Trading houses Vitol and Trafigura obtained the first U.S. licenses to load and export cargoes from the OPEC country.
But the additional supply has yet to significantly ease PDVSA’s swollen inventories or quickly reverse crude production cuts imposed in early January.
STORAGE CHALLENGES SLOW VENEZUELAN OIL SALES
Sources involved in the transactions said difficulties in transferring and storing the oil, along with final customers’ reluctance to pay the prices sought by traders, have slowed sales.
Since the two first tankers departed from Venezuelan waters on January 12 heading to storage terminals in the Bahamas and St. Lucia in the Caribbean, five other vessels have followed, carrying Venezuelan crude to those ports and to the Bullen Bay terminal in Curacao, the shipping data showed.
PDVSA, Vitol and Trafigura did not immediately reply to requests for comment. Curacao’s government last week confirmed Venezuelan oil was being stored in that island.
U.S. officials said last week that some $500 million in proceeds from the first oil sales would be deposited in a fund. Venezuela’s government this week said some $300 million in initial proceeds would be used for imports and spending, but they have not elaborated on export volumes.
Besides the cargoes chartered by the trading houses, the only other company currently exporting Venezuelan crude is Chevron, PDVSA’s main joint venture partner, which has accelerated shipments this month from the 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) it exported in December, according to the data.
(Reporting by Marianna Parraga; additional reporting by Shariq Khan. Editing by Julia Symmes-Cobb and Louise Heavens)