Venezuela's oil exports are hanging tough around 700,000 bpd, where they have been for the last three months, according to tanker tracking data and PDVSA documents cited by Reuters.
Of that 700,000 bpd, roughly 75% of that oil found its way to Asia and the Middle East, tanker tracker data showed.
PDVSA's oil exports fell sharply last year after the United States toughened its stance on the Latin American country's oil exports by ordering it to stop swapping its crude oil for imported fuel-a type of transaction that had been previously allowed under U.S. sanctions.
Venezuela's oil exports were below 400,000 bpd last September and below 370,000 bpd last October. But in November, Venezuela increased its exports to 690,000 bpd after it found new mysterious buyers that were all registered in Russia.
For the month of March, Venezuela shipped an average of 688,533 bpd of crude oil and fuel. One of those cargoes, of 110,000 barrels, however, made its way to Europe.
This 688,000 bpd is a 19% drop from this time last year.
Venezuela's exports are a shell of what they once were prior to the start of the sanctions and prior to the socialist government running its oil industry into the ground.
Still, the United States has been unable to force Venezuela's oil exports to zero. In perhaps a show of good faith, Venezuela today released from jail the six U.S. executives at Citgo, the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela's state-held oil firm PDVSA, and placed them on house arrest while the Biden administration reviews the U.S. sanctions. The Citgo 6 have been detained in Venezuela since 2017, and in prison for years.
India, for one, struggling to find more sources for cheap crude oil, has voiced its preference for being able to import Venezuelan oil.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
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Julianne Geiger is a veteran editor, writer and researcher for Oilprice.com, and a member of the Creative Professionals Networking Group. More