Venezuela's oil exports fell 6.5 per cent in February from a month earlier to some 737,000 barrels per day as more shipments to the United States and Europe could not fully offset the loss of what used to be the OPEC country's main market, China, according to vessel monitoring data and documents from state company PDVSA.
Washington has controlled the South American nation's oil exports since early January, when US forces captured illegitimate president Nicolas Maduro. Trading houses Trafigura and Vitol and US producer Chevron are now exporting the lion's share of Venezuela's barrels.
Even as Chevron and the traders sent more cargoes to the US, Europe and the Caribbean last month, the increase was not enough to compensate for a 67 per cent decline in exports to Asia, which averaged some 48,000 bpd, compared with 145,000 bpd in January and more than 600,000 bpd last year.
A lack of very large crude carriers to transport bigger cargoes also limited exports from Venezuela, whose main oil port, the Jose terminal, handles about 70 per cent of total shipments, creating a need for larger vessels to cut down loading times.
Overall, oil exports in February were 6.5 per cent lower than in January and stood 19 per cent below the same month of 2025. The trading houses exported a total of 26.9 million barrels since they began marketing and shipping the country's crude and fuel last month, according to the data, of some 40 million barrels sold so far under US oversight.
Venezuela's direct exports to the US rose 32 per cent to about 375,000 bpd, shipments to Europe increased ninefold to 158,000 bpd and Chevron sold its first cargo of Venezuelan heavy crude to India's refiner Reliance Industries in three years.
With at least half a dozen supertankers navigating to Venezuela to pick up cargoes, exports are expected to accelerate in March, particularly to India, the data showed.
(Reporting by Marianna Parraga; Editing by Brendan O'Boyle and Bill Berkrot)
