Venezuela has hiked oil exports since April as clandestine operators acquire large tonnage for the risky tanker trade, according to data providers.
Figures from Kpler showed the Opec member exported 540,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude last month, the highest monthly figure since November 2020.
The cargoes were lifted by six VLCCs, four suezmaxes, one aframax and one panamax.
The 321,00-dwt Xing Ye (built 2014), 105,000-dwt Paramaconi (built 2011) and 61,300-dwt Vilma (built 2005) arrived at Venezuelan ports this month for oil transport, Kpler data suggested.
Bloomberg data indicated that Venezuelan exports amounted to a three-month high of 480,000 bpd in April, revealing a similar upward trend.
Of those barrels, 97% were destined for China and the rest to Cuba.
In general, the ship operators involved in Venezuelan exports are either little known or linked to state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA.
Industry sources said secretive companies have acquired many aged vessels in recent quarters, paying high prices for large tankers in the secondhand market.
They are believed to be compensated by freight rates far above market levels for transporting sanctioned cargoes via covert operations, such as identity spoofing, flag hopping and stealthy ship-to-ship transfers.
But Venezuela might not be able to continue hiking exports, with oil stocks running low in the country.
Bloomberg data showed Venezuelan crude inventories stood at 5.19m barrels on 18 April — the lowest since January 2020. May's data is not available.
While sitting on the world’s largest oil reserves, Venezuela has seen continued falls in crude output for years due to the lack of investment in upstream facilities.
Figures from Opec revealed the South American country produced 500,000 bpd of crude last year, down from 796,000 bpd in 2019.
Venezuela’s social-economic crisis has worsened since the US tightened sanctions on the country’s oil sector in January 2019 in a bid to drive out President Nicolas Maduro.
Few shipowners have been willing to trade openly in Venezuela since Washington briefly blacklisted several tankers managed by major Greek operators in mid-2020 for shipping Venezuelan oil.
After taking office in January, US President Joe Biden has not been willing to engage with Venezuela.
But Maduro has reportedly been courting the Biden administration in recent weeks over the easing of sanctions.
Bloomberg Intelligence analysts James Blatchford and Scott Levine said refineries in the US Gulf could resume imports of Venezuelan crude if the US sanctions are lifted.
“We still think the odds of this are low in the near term,” they wrote in a note.
