Venezuela’s oil exports fell in July as crude processing units were hit by outages, reducing available stocks in the country’s main producing region and increasing delays in loading cargoes, according to documents and ship monitoring data.
The OPEC country’s exports had recovered in previous months thanks to U.S. licenses and authorizations granted to partners of state oil company PDVSA, but domestic operational problems sent the volume of crude and fuel shipped to its second lowest monthly level of the year.
A total of 38 cargoes left Venezuelan waters last month, carrying an average of 585,600 barrels per day (bpd) of crude and fuel, and 266,000 tons of oil byproducts and petrochemicals, according to LSEG documents and data.
Oil exports were down 26% from the previous month and 33% from the same month in 2023. Shipments of by-products and petrochemicals, including petroleum coke and methanol, were down 26% from June.
The data showed the United States received some 281,260 bpd, the top destination for Venezuela’s oil exports for the first time since Washington began imposing energy sanctions on the country in 2019. It was followed by China with 231,400 bpd.
U.S. producer Chevron hit its second-highest monthly export level this year, shipping some 238,000 bpd to U.S. ports. Spain’s Repsol, which began selling Venezuelan crude to U.S. customers in July, shipped 102,000 bpd to the United States and Europe.
According to an internal PDVSA document, the upgrading and blending stations that process very heavy oil produced in Venezuela’s vast Orinoco belt did not operate at full capacity in July.
The Petrolera Sinovensa and Petrocedeno projects experienced brief operational interruptions due to equipment malfunctions, while a breakdown has taken the upgrading unit of a third project, Petromonagas, offline since early July.
Low inventories of fuel oil and some grades of Orinoco Belt crude, including diluted crude oil (DCO), and the need to load cargoes through ship-to-ship transfers have increased the shipping delays PDVSA has been facing since the start of the year.
Venezuela’s disputed elections, in which incumbent President Nicolas Maduro and opposition coalition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez both claimed victory, have slowed economic activity in recent days while sparking protests and mass arrests.
However, PDVSA’s main activities, including crude production and refining, have been operating without major interruptions.
