With the proverbial walls closing in on Venezuela on account of the United States-driven political squeeze of the Maduro administration through the choking off of that country’s oil exports, reports continue to surface about the South American republic pressing so-called ‘dark ships’ into service to continue its oil exports.
With the high drama that attends the oil exports confrontation frequently drifting from the absurd to the sublime, the most recent reports of just a few days ago assert that tankers are employing false location techniques to secretly export millions of barrels of oil to Russia in order to secure foreign exchange earnings to keep the country’s economy afloat.
A November 14 Bloomberg article authored by Lucia Kassai names the Liberian-flagged oil-tanker, The Dragon, as being one of the vessels being pressed into service to move Venezuelan oil for the Russian state-run oil company Rosneft Oil Company, PJSC.
The article asserts that the efforts to thwart the US squeeze on Venezuelan oil exports is proceeding through the turning off of vessels’ transponders long prior to their arrival in Venezuela in order to provide misleading information about their location.
The Bloomberg report says that there has been an increased incidence of oil tankers turning off their location signals over the past month “after the US went after a Chinese-owned shipping company” that was reportedly moving crude oil for Iran. In the instance of Venezuela, the ploy would appear to be working since, according to the Bloomberg report “more tankers appear to be using the technique to avoid penalties, helping give a boost to Venezuelan crude output that has plummeted since the U.S. imposed sanctions.”
The article reports that during the first eleven days of this month Venezuela loaded around 10.86 million barrels of crude, more than double what had been loaded during the corresponding period in October. “About half of those barrels were loaded onto ships that had turned off their transponders, which later delivered cargoes to China and India,” the article says.
The responses of the actors named in the Bloomberg article as being involved in seeking to bypass the US embargo have run the proverbial in denying complicity. Dynacom Tankers Management Ltd., the manager for the Dragon is quoted as saying that since January none of its vessels “ever entered into any contract with any U.S. sanctioned entity, nor have they ever violated any U.S sanction either related to Venezuela or otherwise,” though the company reportedly declined to comment on why the signal for the Dragon had been off “for the past three weeks” or confirm if the vessel was docked in Venezuela.
Russia’s Rosneft, meanwhile, is quoted as saying that it and its subsidiary RTSA “didn’t charter vessels in this logistic chain” and that its operations involving Venezuela “are based on contracts reached long before sanctions and fully comply with all the rules of international law.”
Possessing the world’s single largest oil reserves, Venezuela’s oil revenues account for about 99 per cent of the country’s export earnings. Apart from petroleum, the country’s natural resources include natural gas, iron ore, gold, bauxite, diamonds and other minerals. This year, the loss in oil earnings to Venezuela on account of the US sanctions is expected to be in the region of US$11 billion.
