Venezuela’s oil exports in October fell below 700 thousand barrels per day amid operational setbacks in the country’s main production area, a sign of a sustained recovery in production, supported by the easing of US sanctions, and it may take some time.
The US Treasury Department in mid-October issued a general license allowing Venezuela to export crude oil, fuel and gas to markets of its choice for six months, a measure to encourage fair presidential elections next year.
But the judicial suspension of the opposition primaries this week prompted Washington to warn about the possible withdrawal of licenses if the government does not allow opposition candidates to participate freely.
The state oil company PDVSA and its joint ventures exported an average of 666,290 barrels per day of crude oil and fuel last month, 19% less than the 821,500 barrels per day shipped in September, according to internal company documents and ship tracking data.
The main destination of exports was China again, followed by the United States, which received about 178,290 barrels per day exported by Chevron, which operates under an individual license allowed by Washington.
Venezuela also exported 228,500 metric tons of by-products from oil and petrochemicals, down from 324,000 tons in the previous month. The data showed that it also shipped about 32 thousand barrels per day of crude oil and fuel to its political ally Cuba.
The documents showed that the decrease was primarily due to insufficient diluents for the production of exportable raw varieties and power outages, which led to the closure of a company for ore modernization.
Venezuela’s crude oil production fell to 762 thousand barrels per day in September from 820 thousand barrels per day the previous month, according to figures provided to OPEC, while the cumulative average so far this year, of about 780 thousand barrels per day, is still below the target of one million barrels per day in 2023, and the country has only one active drilling platform.
