Venezuelan petroleum coke exports remain lower than in previous years, six months after the US lifted sanctions on the country's oil industry, mainly because of ageing logistics at Venezuela's ports.
Venezuela's coke exports totalled 983,000t in the first half of the year, down from 1.2mn t in the same period last year, according to preliminary data from ship tracking service Kpler. Exports last month were just 73,000t, down by 36pc from a year earlier and the lowest volume loaded from the country since November, when Kpler reported zero exports.
Venezuela only loaded three coke vessels in June, Kpler data show. Two were loaded at the Jose port — a 45,500t cargo heading to China and a 16,100t vessel to Brazil. The third vessel was reported as loading 11,200t of petroleum coke at the La Estacada port on Lake Maracaibo after previously loading 11,200t at the Boca Grande Barge STS terminal and 16,500t at Port Arthur, Texas. But the Boca Grande terminal typically handles iron ore and La Estacada mainly coal, crude and other oil products.
The third vessel unloaded in Poland in early July, which would mark the first time Venezuelan coke had shipped to a northern European buyer since the sanctions were imposed, assuming the cargo was in fact petroleum coke and not coal or another commodity.
While Venezuelan coke exports were expected to broaden in 2026 following the US' sanctions wavier, the country has mainly continued loading supply for countries that maintained imports of the material after the US imposed sanctions in 2019, such as China, India and Brazil. So far in July, Kpler data show Venezuela has loaded one cargo for China and one for Brazil.
Part of the reason for limited Venezuelan coke exports so far this year has been slow loading because of ageing port equipment.
"The logistics have deteriorated so badly that they are only able to do one to two vessels a month," a trader said.
One Venezuelan terminal currently takes around 15 days to load a single 50,000t cargo because of a lack of maintenance, he added. And a second port with a lower draught takes around 10 days to load a cargo.
Some market participants have also suggested that Venezuela's stockpiles have now been depleted, leading to lower availability for export. But others are sceptical of this claim. Venezuela's state-owned PdV estimated Jose's stocks at more than 12mn t in June 2017, with many market participants at the time reporting they could be twice or even three times that amount. Venezuela's total exports from 2017 through July 2026 totalled only 10.3mn t, according to Kpler.
Tracking Venezuela's exports through official channels is challenging, since the government does not report export data. And although Kpler shows almost 700,000t of Venezuelan coke shipped to China between March 2025 and April 2026, Chinese customs data, currently available through June, show no Venezuelan coke imported since March 2025.
The reason for the absence of Venezuelan coke in Chinese customs data is not clear.
