Venezuela’s government is deploying vessels to the Gulf of Venezuela in response to the U.S. federal government’s move to deploy warships near Venezuela’s coast.
Bloomberg reported the news, citing a social media post by Venezuelan defense minister Vladimir Padrino, who noted that the ships to be deployed north of Lake Maracaibo were larger than patrolling vessels. Padrino added that drones would be deployed to the area as well, Aljazeera quoted the minister as saying, in addition to “larger vessels further north in our territorial waters”.
The Gulf of Venezuela features several major ports, including ones that handle a lot of oil trade, including Chevron’s exports of Venezuelan heavy crude to the U.S. Gulf Coast. The announcement of the vessel deployment follows an order by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to deploy some 15,000 troops and surveillance drones to the border with Colombia in response to the U.S. warship deployment.
President Donald Trump earlier this month ordered three warships to head to the waters off the coast of Venezuela on the grounds of confronting drug cartels. The vessels were to be deployed “over the course of several months,” a White House official told CBS.
The events are unfolding just two weeks after Chevron chartered a tanker to load Venezuelan crude after the supermajor’s return to the South American country following President Trump’s revocation of Chevron’s license to operate in sanction-bound Venezuela.
The company was producing some 240,000 barrels daily via is Venezuelan joint ventures before Trump axed its sanction waiver. This is a significant chunk of Venezuela’s total oil exports, although these remain depressed under sanction pressure, at some 700,000 barrels daily, based on recent data. The Chevron portion is pretty much equal to the total average daily exports of Venezuelan crude to the United States this year, according to data from Kpler.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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