Page 8 - LatAmOil Week 48 2019

LatAmOil VENEZUELA LatAmOil
Venezuelan oil exports up in November
VENEZUELA’S national oil company (NOC) PdVSA reportedly saw crude oil and fuel export volumes rise to 1.037mn barrels per day (bpd) in the month of November. is is the third highest monthly gure reported this year and marks a 25% increase on the October gure, Reuters said last week.
Citing data from Re nitiv Eikon and inter- nal documents from PdVSA, the news agency ascribed the increase to an uptick in deliveries to India. Ever since Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) opted in October to resume direct dealings with PdVSA, India has been the main destination for Venezuelan oil and fuel exports, it stated.
On its own, the agency added, RIL acquired only 13% of the crude exported from Venezuela in November. But RIL was not the only Indian buyer, it indicated. Rosneft, the state-owned Russian company that handled fully 36% of Venezuelan oil exports last month, shipped oil to multiple buyers in Asia, it explained.
It also named Spain’s Repsol as a major buyer of Venezuelan crude, noting that the company had taken 8% of Venezuela’s oil exports in November.
Reuters did not provide a full breakdown of the data on Venezuelan shipments. It did report, though, that PdVSA had loaded nine very large crude carriers (VLCCs) and seven Suezmax tankers with its oil in November.
One of the VLCC cargoes went to China, which acquired 1.8mn barrels of oil from Ven- ezuela last month. Meanwhile, Cuba imported around 67,000 bpd in November, down from 118,000 bpd in October and from 143,000 bpd in September.
Under the sanctions regime introduced by the US government in January of this year, PdV- SA’s ability to sell oil on the world market is lim- ited. In recent months, the Venezuelan company has been sending its production to customers under arrangements that allow the parties to avoid violating the sanctions. It typically
SURINAME
classi es its crude and fuel as in-kind repayment for loans taken out from Russian and Chinese lenders. As a result, the buyers have been able to circumvent trade restrictions.
ese schemes have helped Venezuela pre- serve a link to consumers, but they have not helped PdVSA overcome its isolation from world nancial markets. As such, they are, in some sense, a measure of the success of the US sanctions regime, which seeks to knock out sup- port for Venezuela’s oil and gas sector.
Elliott Abrams, the US State Department’s special representative for Venezuela, pointed out last week that these arrangement also had practical consequences. Since the NOC has sent $3bn worth of oil to China and another $900mn worth to Cuba, while also making payments of $1.5bn to Russia, it has not been able to channel those funds into economic development and recovery initiatives, he said.
“ at’s about $5bn that could have been spent on food and medicine but was not,” Abrams told reporters on November 29.
The envoy was speaking just a few days before the US government added six oil tankers to its list of vessels that have contravened restric- tions on trade with Venezuela. All six of these ships are owned by PdVSA, according to press reports. ™
US diplomat Elliott Abrams (Photo: US Mission to the OAS)
Apache will drill deeper offshore Suriname
US-BASED Apache is moving forward with a testing programme after sinking Maka Cen- tral-1, a well at Block 58 o shore Suriname, to a depth of 6,200 metres.
In a statement issued earlier this week, the company said it had already targeted two plays in two di erent sections of the Upper Creta- ceous strata.
It did not comment on the data gathered dur- ing these tests, but it did say that it intended to continue drilling in order to reach a new target
depth of 6,900 metres. At this depth, geologists will be able to evaluate a third possible play in the well, it explained.
Apache began drilling Maka Central-1 in late September of this year. e company’s next steps
will be to wrap up the testing programme and modify equipment on its rig so that it can resume drilling work in the middle of this month. Once
the well reaches its new target depth, Apache will
be able to carry out further testing and evalua-
tion of the sha ’s contents. 
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 48 05•December•2019