A crude tanker chartered by Trafigura departed on Sunday from Venezuela's Jose port to Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP), LSEG data and documents showed, the first cargo going directly to the U.S. as part of a 50-million-barrel supply deal agreed this month between Caracas and Washington.
This month, trading houses Vitol and Trafigura received the first U.S. licenses to load and export Venezuelan oil as part of the deal. They have since shipped cargoes to storage terminals in the Caribbean, and from there they have been marketing and selling the crude to refiners worldwide.
The Liberia-flagged tanker Gloria Maris, carrying some 1 million barrels of Venezuela's Merey heavy crude, is the first sent by the traders directly from Venezuela to a U.S. port since the deal began, according to the documents and data.
A smaller tanker, the Barbados-flagged Volans, also departed from Jose on Sunday carrying some 450,000 barrels of Venezuelan crude to the Bullen Bay terminal in Curacao, the LSEG data showed.
The traders have shipped between 10 million and 11 million barrels of Venezuelan oil as part of the supply deal so far, according to shipping data.
They are getting ready to begin exporting fuel oil as well, according to the sources and documents.
Before Venezuela can reverse output cuts it has made during a U.S. blockade of all sanctioned tankers, the country needs to drain most of the over 40 million barrels it accumulated in storage since last month.
(Reuters - Reporting by Marianna Parraga; Editing by Cassandra Garrison and David Gregorio)
