Venezuela military guarding sensitive oil transfer

The Venezuelan military is heavily guarding the gradual transfer of crude from an impaired floating storage vessel in the Gulf of Paria, making it difficult for concerned parties in Venezuela and nearby Caribbean islands to monitor progress.

State-owned PdV started the piecemeal offloading of the Nabarima on 21 October, siphoning the oil onto a 30,000 bl barge and then onto the 700,000 bl Aframax Icaro. Once full, the Icaro will move the crude into onshore storage.

The Nabarima floating storage and offloading unit (FSO) has been tethered for 10 years at the PdV-operated Corocoro field, in which Italy's Eni has a 26pc stake.

With fears of an oil spill running high, finger-pointing abounds. The US blames Venezuela for neglecting to maintain the FSO and take action. Caracas blames US sanctions for thwarting its access to equipment to safely conduct a ship-to-ship transfer (STS). Eni is caught in between.

The Italian company's proposal for a ship-to-ship transfer using a tanker equipped with dynamic positioning hinges on pending US assurances that the operation would not violate sanctions on Venezuela. Because PdV is the operator, Eni also needs clearance from Caracas.

In the meantime, PdV has taken matters into its own hands, despite its limited technical capacity. But the heavy National Guard and counter-intelligence agency presence aboard the ships has resulted in an information "blackout", a local contractor close to the operation said.

"Ideally, one would use a Panamax or Aframax tanker with a dynamic positioning system, but no one with a tanker of those characteristics is willing to contract with us because of Washington's sanctions," a senior PdV official told Argus, adding that the company has tried on several occasions since mid-2019 to carry out an STS operation without the appropriate vessel.

"If the Nabarima tilts or sinks, there is no doubt that the subsea pipelines that connect to the Corocoro field will rupture," the official warned. "The environmental damage would be enormous, and we don't have the equipment or the personnel to address that. All the blame lies with the Trump administration's illegal sanctions which created this international crisis."

The US has said that the sanctions are not designed to impede health, safety or environmental measures.

By Patricia Garip