It may be the oil market’s worst-kept secret: Millions of barrels of Venezuelan heavy crude, embargoed by the U.S., have been surreptitiously going to China.
The cat and mouse games that avoid detection and prohibition are ship-to-ship transfers, shell entities, and silent satellite signals. Dodge has one more aspect. It involves "doping" the chemical additives and renaming the paperwork so that it can be sold as a completely different crude without any trace of Venezuelan roots.
The invoices and emails reviewed by Bloomberg show how many traders will disguise the source of crude and deliver it to Asia, making Chinese refineries the lifeline needed for Venezuela's battered oil industry. U.S. officials must not bar Chinese or any international organization from buying Venezuelan oil. They can consume them financially by imposing restrictions on doing business with American companies. This is why such complex steps are taken to disguise the source of crude.
Nonetheless, U.S. sanctions are difficult to enforce, said Scott Modell, managing director of Rapiden Energy Advisors LLC. “There are many ways to prevent sanctions,” he said. "A lot of people are willing to take risks because they have a lot of money to make."