Venezuela’s oil and fuel exports fell nearly 9% last month after two major blackouts and equipment failures at state-run PDVSA’s crude upgraders.According to ship monitoring data and documents.
The OPEC member country’s oil production and exports have recovered somewhat from very low numbers between 2020 and 2022, but PDVSA has been forced to increase production capacity due to a long-standing lack of investment, US sanctions and persistent operational problems. Limiting what one can do.
A major blackout across much of the country in late August affected refineries, oil terminals and four crude oil refineries. Which processes additional heavy oil from the Orinoco Belt until early September. A second disruption a few days later and equipment failures again disabled three breeders for several days, documents show.
Total According to the data, 42 ships departed from Venezuelan waters in September, and transported an average of 842,600 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil and fuels and 267 thousand metric tons of petroleum byproducts and petrochemicals.
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That was down from last month’s strong levels, but up from the same period a year earlier. PDVSA and its joint ventures exported 925 thousand bpd of crude oil and fuel in August, the highest monthly figure since the beginning of 2020.
Asia led September exports with 510,000 bpd, followed by the United States, which received about 212,000 bpd of crude shipped by Chevron from its production joint ventures with PDVSA. Spanish Repsol exports to Europe They increased to 97 thousand bpd, while supplies to Cuba fell to about 22 thousand bpd.
Exports to North America and Europe have increased this year under individual authorizations given by the US Treasury Department to energy companies such as Chevron, Repsol, Eni. And Maurel and Prom.
The country has also tried to keep shipments to China steady, with a large share of exports passing through Malaysia for ship-to-ship transfers, ship tracking data shows.
Venezuela imported 67,000 bpd of fuel and moderator in September, down from 90,000 bpd in August, the data showed.