Trading house Trafigura has sold its first cargo of Venezuelan crude oil as part of a 50-million-barrel supply deal between Caracas and Washington, industry sources said on Thursday, with Spanish refiner Repsol set to take the shipment.
The cargo is expected to be delivered to Repsol in February, two of the sources said. Trafigura and Repsol declined to comment.
The deal would mark one of the first sales of Venezuelan oil to Europe since the United States captured the South American country's leader earlier this month and then struck agreements with Caracas to export up to 50 million barrels of its oil.
Trafigura and rival commodities trading house Vitol were tapped by Washington to facilitate the initial exports.
Vitol is separately shipping a cargo of Venezuelan oil to its Saras refinery in Italy as part of the deal, several industry sources told Reuters earlier on Thursday. Vitol declined to comment.
The vessel Poliegos is set to start loading crude oil from Venezuela's Jose terminal around January 29, data from ship tracking service Kpler showed. The vessel will be loaded by Vitol, a source familiar with the matter said.
Vitol has also struck deals to sell cargoes of Venezuelan oil to US refiners Valero Energy and Phillips 66, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
The trading houses have been marketing Venezuelan oil to refiners in India and elsewhere too.
(Reporting by Pietro Lombardi, Shariq Khan, Ahmad Ghaddar, Arathy Somasekhar and Georgina McCartney; Editing by Alex Lawler, Elaine Hardcastle and Nia Williams)
