By Marianna Parraga
Dec 22 (Reuters) – Tanker loading in Venezuela dwindled on Monday, with most ships moving oil cargoes only between domestic ports following U.S. action against two more ships and as state-run energy company PDVSA struggles to recover from a cyberattack, according to tracking data and sources.
The U.S. Coast Guard this month seized a supertanker under sanctions carrying Venezuelan oil and tried to intercept two more Venezuela-related ships over the weekend, U.S. authorities said. One of them is an empty ship under U.S. sanctions, and the other is an unsanctioned, fully loaded tanker bound for China.
Washington has not provided updated information on the ships. U.S. President Donald Trump last week announced a blockade of all oil tankers under sanctions entering and leaving Venezuela. Trump’s pressure campaign on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has included a ramped-up military presence in the region and more than two dozen military strikes on vessels the U.S. alleges are transporting drugs in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea near the South American nation. At least 100 people have been killed.
OIL PRICES RISE
The vessel interceptions have dealt the toughest blow to PDVSA since the U.S. Treasury Department in 2020 imposed sanctions on the company’s former oil trading firms, two units of Russia’s Rosneft, which forced output and export cuts.
Brent crude futures gained 2.17% to $61.78 a barrel on Monday, while U.S. WTI crude rose 2.2% to $57.77 following the U.S. actions and amid Russia’s war against Ukraine, with both developments raising fears of supply disruptions.
As of Monday, PDVSA had delivered a 1.9 million-barrel cargo of heavy crude to the Aruba-flagged sanctioned vessel Azure Voyager at the Jose port, but no other supertanker bound for Asia was scheduled to load soon, internal company documents showed.
The number of loaded tankers that have not departed has increased in recent days, leaving millions of barrels of Venezuelan oil stuck in ships, while customers demand deeper discounts and contract changes to take risky voyages beyond the country’s waters.
Some tankers approaching Venezuela’s coast, either to load oil for export or to deliver imported naphtha, have also made U-turns or suspended navigation recently until instructions from owners to load are clarified, LSEG monitoring data showed on Monday.
PDVSA is slowly restoring some online systems and resorting to written records after a cyberattack last week. The company has been unable to fully re-establish its centralized administrative system, and many workers have not received their salaries on time, sources said.
PDVSA and Venezuela’s Oil Ministry have not replied to requests for comment. The country’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Yvan Gil, said on Monday the U.S. seizures are against international law and constitute “acts of piracy.”
China’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday the recent U.S. interceptions were a serious violation of international law.
PDVSA’s main joint-venture partner Chevron exported a 500,000-barrel cargo of Venezuelan oil on Sunday, bound for the U.S. Gulf Coast on one of its tankers under its U.S. authorization, LSEG ship data showed.
Oil Minister Delcy Rodriguez said on Sunday Venezuela had not interrupted deliveries to Chevron, in a social media post that included a video of Venezuela’s maritime authority overseeing the ship’s departure.
Chevron has exported seven cargoes of Venezuelan oil to the U.S. this month, each carrying between 300,000 and 500,000 barrels, according to monitoring data.
PURSUED BY THE U.S.
The Panama-flagged empty supertanker Bella 1, which the U.S. Coast Guard tried to intercept on Sunday when the ship approached Venezuela, was drifting on Monday northeast of Bermuda in the Caribbean, a satellite image obtained by TankerTrackers.com showed.
A U.S. official told Reuters on Sunday the tanker had not been boarded and that interceptions could take different forms – including by sailing or flying close to vessels of concern.
The loaded vessel Skipper, the first seized by the U.S. this month, reached an area near the Galveston, Texas, port for transferring oil cargoes on Sunday, maritime sources said.
(Reporting by Marianna Parraga and Reuters StaffEditing by Rod Nickel)
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