The oil rigs of Venezuela are completely paralyzed, for lack of being able to sell their crude, according to the count of the company Baker Hughes, Friday, July 3. Thus, no crude oil extraction platform was active in June, compared to 22 a year earlier at the same time, and more than a hundred in 1998.
Highly dependent on oil, Venezuela "Is experiencing significant deterioration of its fields (tankers) (…) and now he has no one to sell it to, or where to store the crude. ", oil specialist and university professor Luis Oliveros, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Carlos Mendoza Potella, adviser to the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) in petroleum matters, agrees. "The stocks are at their maximum, you can't rotate the wells like that (…). If you don't have where to store your production because you can't get the boats to leave, you will start from scratch ", he told AFP.
Venezuela's oil production, of which black gold has long been the source of wealth, fell in May to unprecedented levels for nearly eighty years, a plunge that fueled the appalling economic crisis in the South American country. .
Fuel shortage in March
By compiling "Secondary sources" – which refer to the matter -, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) specifies in its monthly report published Wednesday that Venezuela pumped every day, in May, 54,000 barrels less than in April, falling to a total of 570,000 barrels per day. This fall, spectacular as it is, is part of the slow decay of the Venezuelan oil sector, which produced 3.2 million barrels per day twelve years ago.
If the opposition around Juan Guaido puts forward a cocktail of corruption, mismanagement and incompetence to explain this fall, the Chavist power accuses the range of sanctions taken by Washington against the oil sector aimed at putting the socialist president Nicolas Maduro under pressure.
Until 2018, Venezuela sent 500,000 barrels per day of crude oil to the United States and received from that country 120,000 barrels per day of light oil and additives necessary for refining. But in April 2019, President Donald Trump’s administration set up a particularly draconian Venezuelan oil embargo.
In addition, S&P Global Platts points out, Caracas has had to reduce its crude oil production in recent weeks due to "Storage limitation" and "Lack of light oil" to fluidize the extra heavy crude and make it transportable.
In March, faced with a lack of cash needed to supply gasoline abroad, Venezuela ran out of steam. The country has experienced a fuel shortage that only the arrival of five Iranian oil tankers loaded with 1.5 million barrels of fuel has managed to overcome.
