MOSCOW (MRC) -- A tanker chartered by the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) is loading Venezuelan crude for export, documents from state-run PDVSA show, providing evidence of the two countries' latest tactics to expand their trade in defiance of US sanctions, reported Reuters.
Venezuela and Iran have deepened their cooperation this year as Venezuela has exchanged gold and other commodities for Iranian food, condensate and fuel.
Names of scrapped vessels are being used by several PDVSA (Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A.) customers, including NIOC, to disguise the routes and identities of the tankers they use.
A very large crude carrier (VLCC), identified in PDVSA's loading documents as the Ndros, arrived at Venezuela's main oil port of Jose last week to load 1.9 million barrels of heavy Merey 16 crude bound for Asia, the documents showed.
Vessel-monitoring service TankerTrackers.com used satellite photos to show the Ndros was scrapped in 2018, confirming reports on international shipping databases.
Also using satellite imagery and comparing it with photographs, it said the VLCC's real identity is the Liberia-flagged Calliop. Reuters could not independently verify that as the tanker's name at the hull had been painted black before its arrival at Jose.
PDVSA, Venezuela's oil ministry and NIOC did not respond to requests for comment. The US Treasury Department declined to comment.
Hong Kong-based Ship Management Services Ltd, which bought the Calliop in October, the shipping databases showed, could not be reached for comment.
A spokesperson for the US State Department said that "reports of any impending deliveries would again illustrate the illegitimate regime in Venezuela has turned to international pariahs like Iran to enable their exploitation of Venezuela's natural resources".
Iran sent a VLCC named the Horse to Venezuela in September. It delivered condensate, a very light form of oil, for PDVSA to blend with its very heavy oil to formulate exportable crude.
The tanker returned to Iran in October carrying Venezuelan heavy oil for NIOC, PDVSA's schedules showed. The tanker was misidentified at PDVSA's databases as the Master Honey.
In the run-up to leaving office in January, US President Donald Trump's administration has tightened sanctions on Iran and Venezuela.
A handful of PDVSA's customers that had been allowed to swap Venezuelan oil for fuel under US sanctions had their authorisations suspended in October. But Washington has not intercepted vessels that contribute to the Iran-Venezuela trade.
Smaller Iranian tankers have also delivered gasoline to Venezuela, making several voyages between the two countries since May.
The US Department of Justice in August seized 1.1 million barrels of Iranian gasoline bound for Venezuela on four privately-owned tankers.
The cargoes were transferred to two separate tankers that delivered the gasoline to US ports for auction, in what the department said led to the largest seizure of Iranian fuel.
As MRC wrote before, in late October 2020, Venezuelan state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela restarted gasoline production at the FCC unit of its 310,000 bpd Cardon refinery. The unit was producing between 15,000 and 20,000 bpd of gasoline, according to union leader Ivan Freites. PDVSA earlier last week of October began producing at least 25,000 bpd of gasoline at Cardon’s reformer unit.
MRC also reported that Russian state oil company Rosneft's decision to cease operations in Venezuela and sell its assets there to a Russian government-owned company was a "maneuver" made in reaction to collapsing oil prices, a US State Department official said earlier this year.
We remind that Angarsk Polymers Plant, part of Russian oil giant Rosneft, has resumed its low density polyethylene (LDPE) production after an unscheduled shutdown because of a technical issues at the ethylene unit. The plant's customers said Angarsk Polymers Plant had brought on-stream its LDPE production by 28 August after the forced shutdown due to technical problems at its ethylene production. And the first shipments of polyethylene (PE) to customers began on 31 August. The outage lasted slightly over two weeks and began on 10 August The plant's annual production capacity is about 75,000 tonnes.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, October estimated LDPE consumption in Russia grew to 50,030 tonnes from 23,930 tonnes a month earlier. Russian producers increased domestic LDPE shipments after the September shutdowns for maintenance. Russia's estimated LDPE consumption was about 456,490 tonnes in January-October 2020, down by 1% year on year. Lower production was offset by higher imports.
MRC