Behind the Seized Venezuelan Tanker, Cubaâs Secret LifelineThe oil tanker seized by the United States off the coast of Venezuela this week was part of the Venezuelan governmentâs effort to support Cuba, according to documents and people inside the Venezuelan oil industry.
The tanker, which is called Skipper, left Venezuela on Dec. 4, carrying nearly two million barrels of the countryâs heavy crude, according to internal data from Venezuelaâs state oil company, known as PDVSA. The shipâs destination was listed as the Cuban port of Matanzas, the data shows.
Two days after its departure, Skipper offloaded a small fraction of its oil, an estimated 50,000 barrels, to another ship, called Neptune 6, which then headed north toward Cuba, according to the shipping data firm Kpler. After the transfer, Skipper headed east, toward Asia, with the vast majority of its oil on board, according to a U.S. official briefed on the matter.
In recent years, however, only a fraction of Venezuelan oil set aside for Cuba has actually reached the island, according to PDVSA documents and tanker tracking data.
Most of the oil allocated for Cuba has instead been resold to China, with the money providing badly needed hard currency for the Cuban government, according to multiple people close to the Venezuelan government.
Some of that money is believed to have been used by Cuban officials to purchase basic goods, though the opacity of the countryâs economy makes it difficult to estimate where that money ends up, or how it is spent, or how much goes to business intermediaries with ties to both governments.
The oil from Venezuela that does reach Cuba generates electricity and provides fuel for airplanes and machinery. But it is not enough to prevent widespread power outages that have plagued the island amid a broader economic crisis.
Skipperâs planned voyage shows how, in practice, Cuba benefits from oil trade in Venezuela. Cubametales, the state-run firm, listed the shipâs destination as Cuba, suggesting that all of the companyâs allocated 1.1 million barrels were heading to the island.
The tanker, however, ultimately headed to China after offloading only a small fraction of the oil to the Neptune 6 and sending it en route to Cuba, according to a person close to PDVSA.
Then, on Wednesday, as Skipper sailed east in international waters between the islands of Grenada and Trinidad, it fell into a U.S. ambush.
U.S. officials said they would seek a warrant to seize the oil, valued at tens of millions of dollars, adding that the crew had agreed to sail the vessel under Coast Guard supervision to a U.S. port, likely Galveston, Texas.
The history of Skipperâs voyages points to a larger, looser network connecting the energy industries of Venezuela, Cuba, Iran and Russia, the four American adversaries that have been, to various degrees, shut out from the formal global oil market by Washingtonâs sanctions.
Skipperâs crew of about 30 sailors was mostly Russian, a U.S. official said.
Before shipping Venezuelan oil, Skipper spent four years as part of Iranâs covert fleet, transporting Iranian oil to Syria and China, according to data from Kpler, the shipping data firm, and a senior Iranian oil ministry official, who discussed sensitive issues on condition of anonymity.
Elsewhere in Venezuela, Iranian contractors have worked on repairing the countryâs El Palito and Amuay refineries, according to Homayoun Falakshahi, Kplerâs head oil analyst and an expert on Iranâs energy sector.
Russia supplies Venezuela with key imports of naphtha, a light oil product that Venezuela uses to dilute its sludgy main type of crude and make it suitable for export. A Russian state-run oil company, Rosneft, produces nearly 100,000 barrels a day of crude in Venezuela, and in previous years the company had played a crucial role in exporting Venezuelan oil to China.
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