An oil tanker chartered by U.S. Chevron carrying some 300,000 barrels of Venezuelan heavy crude bound for the U.S. Gulf Coast departed on Monday from the OPEC country’s waters, shipping data showed, after a four-day pause in the company’s exports of Venezuelan oil. Chevron is the only company currently authorized by Washington to export Venezuelan crude amid an oil embargo that U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday remained in full force after the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
But amid U.S. strikes in Venezuela between Friday and Saturday and the political crisis it unleashed, Chevron’s loaded tankers had not set sail to the U.S. in recent days, the ship monitoring data showed.
About a dozen separate tankers loaded with Venezuelan oil and fuel departed from the country’s waters with their transponders off in the first days of the year in apparent defiance of the U.S. blockade, according to shipping data and sources including TankerTracking.com.
(Reporting by Marianna Parraga and Sheila Dang; Editing by Liz Hampton, Nathan Crooks and Chizu Nomiyama )