Petrobras refusing ships with Venezuela visits

Brazil's state-controlled Petrobras is no longer chartering oil tankers that have recently operated in Venezuela as pressure mounts on shipping market participants to distance themselves from US-sanctioned Venezuelan national oil company PdV.

Petrobras will not accept tankers that have loaded in Venezuela or carried Venezuelan crude in the last 12 months, a shipbroker told Argus.

Petrobras said today it has adopted a "specific contractual clause" to avoid hiring ships that violate US sanctions, and furthermore, that it recently "reinforced to its suppliers that it would not accept offers from ships that had operated in Venezuela during the sanctions period" without a license from the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac).

Aside from its local listing, Petrobras shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange.

In recent months, Ofac has been increasingly targeting the shipping space as part of a "maximum pressure" campaign to oust President Nicolas Maduro.

Ofac blacklisted earlier this month four tankers, one of which is now chartered by Chevron, for US sanctions violations against Venezuela. More tanker operators, including Greece-based NGM Energy and Dynacom, have recently discontinued loading Venezuelan cargoes because they deem financial and other sanctions-related risks too high.

Other charterers, in addition to Petrobras, are also refusing to hire tankers with recent Venezuela lists, said Lois Zabrocky, chief executive of major tanker owner International Seaways.

The US imposed financial sanctions on Venezuela in 2017, and oil sanctions on the Opec country in January 2019.

By Nicholas Watt and Nathan Walters