Venezuela has plenty of oil buyers again. What it does not have is enough functioning port infrastructure to get them their crude.
Tankers are waiting as long as 30 days to load Venezuelan oil as aging terminals, power outages, and crude-quality problems create a de facto ceiling on exports.
That ceiling appears to be around 1.25 million barrels per day.
PDVSA and its partners have been unable to push exports meaningfully above that level in recent months despite rising production, inventory drawdowns, and strong demand for Venezuelan heavy crude.
The bottleneck is particularly awkward for Washington, which has been pushing to revive Venezuelan production and exports following the removal of Nicolas Maduro in January.
More than 500,000 bpd of Venezuelan crude is already heading to U.S. refineries, according to U.S. Energy Department officials.
Customers are now fighting over terminal access while PDVSA racks up demurrage charges for vessels stuck waiting beyond their loading windows.
The constraint could become more severe as PDVSA partners begin independently marketing their production under Venezuela’s new oil contract rules.
