Trump welcomes China, India investment in Venezuela oil

[WASHINGTON] President Donald Trump said on Saturday (Jan 31) he welcomed investment by China and India in Venezuela’s oil industry.

“China is welcome to come in and will make a great deal on oil,” Trump told reporters during a flight to Mar-a-Lago on Air Force One.

He added that the US is working with India on a deal to purchase Venezuelan oil. “India’s coming in and they’re going to be buying Venezuelan oil, as opposed to buying it from Iran,” he said. “We’ve already made the deal, the concept of that deal.”

Earlier this week, Venezuela’s acting president signed off on historic changes to the country’s nationalist oil policy that would reduce taxes and allow greater ownership for foreign oil companies, less than a month after US forces captured longtime leader Nicolas Maduro.

Shortly after, US Treasury Department issued a general licence expanding the ability for US companies to export, sell and refine crude coming from the sanctioned South American country. 

The US is set to import the most Venezuelan oil in a year after the Trump administration moved to control the country’s energy supply and pressed oil companies to invest US$100 billion in rebuilding the country’s oil infrastructure.

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Yet as the US emerges as the biggest recipient of Venezuelan oil following Maduro’s capture, shipments to China – which averaged 400,000 barrels a day last year – fell to zero in January amid a US naval crackdown on the so-called dark fleet of vessels used to transport sanctioned oil to China. 

Most of the oil arriving in the US comes from Chevron Corp, which holds a US licence to sell sanctioned Venezuelan crude. About 20 per cent is being supplied by commodity traders Trafigura Group and Vitol Group, which were tapped by the Trump administration to help sell up to 50 million barrels of oil after Maduro’s ouster in early January. 

Vitol and Trafigura are on course to lift 14 million barrels of Venezuelan crude, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Much of that supply was on ships that were initially bound for China and were loaded before January. The traders have placed around 9 million barrels of that oil in Caribbean storage tanks, while the rest is going to the US and Europe. BLOOMBERG