Data indicates Venezuela's PDVSA is importing naphtha from Russia

Venezuela's state-owned oil company PDVSA has received and is unloading a Russia-origin 700,000-barrel cargo of heavy naphtha, a key product for its heavy crude output, according to vessel tracking data and a shipping document seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

US-sanctioned PDVSA needs imported light crude, condensate and naphtha to dilute its production of heavy oil and make it exportable. Russia and Iran, which are also under US sanctions, have provided the country with those products in the past.

The state firm ramped up purchases of diluents ahead of a May deadline set by Washington to wind down transactions as part of the cancellation of US licenses to its partners, but it had not received more naphtha cargoes until this import from Russia.

The Barbados-flagged tanker Telesto departed from a ship-to-ship location off Russia's Taman port, according to monitoring service TankerTrackers.com, which identified the tanker in satellite photos. The naphtha's origin seems to be Russia's Tuapse port, it added.

The Aframax tanker began unloading last week at PDVSA's Jose port, according to the shipping document and TankerTrackers.com.

PDVSA last month unloaded two cargoes of imported light crude from unknown origin also to be used as diluent for a total of 1.88 million barrels, according to the document.

Ahead of the license cancellations, PDVSA earlier this year modified some crude blending and upgrading operations at its main production region, the Orinoco Belt, to reduce its need for naphtha and refine more domestically.

The OPEC country's oil exports have remained stable around 800,000 barrels per day since the license cancellations, with PDVSA sending more cargoes to Asia after it lost the US and European markets.

(Reporting by Reuters staff; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)