Thursday, June 25, 2020

"Tankers Carrying Two-Months Worth of Venezuelan Oil are Stuck at Sea"

A bit of the 'ol "inadvertent storage' scenario.

From Reuters via gCaptain:
Tankers carrying nearly two months’ worth of Venezuelan oil output are stuck at sea as global refiners shun the nation’s crude to avoid falling foul of U.S. sanctions, according to industry sources, PDVSA documents and shipping data.

Washington is tightening sanctions to cut Venezuela’s oil exports and deprive the government of socialist President Nicolas Maduro of its main source of revenue.
The OPEC member’s exports are hovering near their lowest levels in more than 70 years and the economy has collapsed, but Maduro has held on, to the frustration of the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Washington has blacklisted ships and merchants this month for their role in trading and transporting state-run PDVSA’s oil and threatened to add more to its list of sanctioned entities.

At least 16 tankers carrying 18.1 million barrels of Venezuelan oil are stuck at sea around the globe as buyers shun them to avoid falling foul of sanctions, according to Refinitiv Eikon data. That is the equivalent of almost two months of output at Venezuela’s current production rate.

Some of the vessels have been at sea for more than six months, and have sailed to several ports but failed to unload....
....MUCH MORE

North Korea is probably in the market, if you don't mind doing ship-to-ship transfer at 2:00 in the morning to a fleet of "fishing trawlers."