Trafigura and Vitol sell more Venezuelan oil to Asia as war roils supply

[SINGAPORE] Commodity traders Trafigura and Vitol are expanding efforts to sell Venezuelan oil into Asia, a move that comes as the South American country’s production rises and the Iran war disrupts competing supplies from the Middle East.

Trafigura has offered Venezuelan flagship Merey 16 crude to refiners in South Korea, according to sources with knowledge of the situation who asked not to be named discussing private transactions. The company also recently delivered oil to a refinery in Malaysia, the sources said.

Traders had also made recent offers to India at discounts of around US$6 a barrel to the Dated Brent benchmark, although it was not immediately clear if any volumes had been sold to the South Asian nation, according to the sources.

After saturating the US market with Venezuelan oil, traders are now seeking to further diversify sales as production rises to a seven-year high, approaching levels seen before Washington imposed sweeping sanctions against the country’s oil industry in 2019. The increase in offers to Asia comes as the Iran war limits tanker traffic through the vital Strait of Hormuz and a peace deal appears elusive.

Following Nicolas Maduro’s ouster in early January, the traders boosted sales to India, which now takes almost as much Venezuelan oil as China once did. But rising Venezuelan crude production will require new buyers. China, formerly the top buyer in Asia, has yet to make any purchases since the Trump administration moved to control Venezuela’s oil sales.

Trafigura offered half a million barrels of Merey 16 to South Korean fuelmakers, sources with knowledge of the situation said. The oil was eventually discharged into a storage facility in South Korea in early June, data from maritime intelligence firm Kpler show. South Korea last bought Venezuelan oil in 2011, according to the country’s customs data compiled by Bloomberg.

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Trafigura declined to comment. The same vessel that delivered oil to South Korea, the Trafigura-chartered supertanker Nissos Kea, also delivered oil to a Malaysian port that serves the Melaka refinery operated by Petroliam Nasional, known as Petronas. The refinery is a major producer of asphalt, for which heavy Venezuelan oil is a well-suited feedstock.

Another supertanker, the Solana, chartered by Vitol, just unloaded two million barrels of Merey 16 into floating storage facilities off the coast of Malaysia. Such facilities are typically used as distribution centres, where large cargoes are broken up into smaller parcels and sold to end users. Vitol did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

The push into Asia comes at a time when prices in the physical oil market are coming off from levels seen at the start of the conflict in the Middle East due to a mix of robust US exports, the release of government emergency reserves and a slowdown in Chinese demand. Growing volumes of Middle Eastern crude offers have also pressured prices recently. BLOOMBERG