With the administration of United States President Joe Biden still showing no sign of a major change in policy in the matter of Washington’s sanctions that continue to significantly compromise the volumes of Venezuela’s oil exports, the administration of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro continues to slip the strictures by seeking new ways of both boosting the country’s oil production and its oil sales in an effort to restart the country’s beleaguered economy.
Last week, a report filed by international oil and gas news source, Rigzone, disclosed that the country’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA, was targeting the near tripling of its oil output this year, having moved to acquire significant supplies of a hydrocarbon known as condensate said to be crucial to the country’s efforts to significantly ramp up the volumes of its oil production in 2021.
Setting aside the constraints imposed on Venezuela’s oil sales on account of the strictures that limit the shipping of the country’s crude oil to overseas markets, another aspect of the US pressure has been to deny PDVSA vital inventory associated with the actual recovery and processing of oil.
The Bloomberg report states that PDVSA has recently succeeded in acquiring the key component that is vital to the significant stepping up of its oil production.
In its recent report Bloomberg claims to have secured access to shipping documents which verify the delivery of the condensate on board a supertanker named Rene. The article said that the very recent shipment marked the first such importation since PDVSA took delivery of an Iranian shipment of condensate back in September last year. Condensate, the article said, is important to the process of thinning Venezuela’s extra thick grade of crude oil. The Bloomberg article explains that Venezuela’s oil must first be thinned “with diluents such as condensate… so that it can be processed in refineries.” In this regard, it says that “PDVSA is reliant on foreign condensate supplies because domestic production has collapsed.”
The Bloomberg report stated that the origin of what is believed to have been a recent shipment of concentrate to Venezuela aboard the Rene was unknown since the shippers employed the now customary approach of switching off the vessel’s satellite transponder in order to allow it to avoid detection.
The move by Venezuela to acquire quantities of the crucial additive is said to be linked to its targeted 1.5 billion barrels a day production level by the end of 2021, which, if realised, would almost triple the current output of 529,000 barrels, the Bloomberg article says.
Believed to possess the world’s single largest oil reserves Venezuela has been hard-pressed to raise its production levels under the weight of the unrelenting sanctions being imposed by the United States.
Apart from the role which the sanctions have played in seriously compromising the movement of Venezuelan oil to external markets, the squeeze on the country’s oil production has also been seriously compromised by other sanctions-related measures that have included serious equipment breakdowns, a dearth of crucial chemicals, and a humanitarian crisis that sparked a diaspora of 5.4 million people, Bloomberg says.
